Showing posts with label record. Show all posts
Showing posts with label record. Show all posts
Friday, 30 December 2016
13 More Tips To Help You Record Narration Like The Pros
1. Place your microphone in the right position.
If you place the microphone too close, you get that distorted clipping sound; and if you have it too far from the narrator, you pick up more ambient noise with the audio being less discernible.
By setting the microphone 6 to 12 inches from the narrator you'll get a crisp clear voice. Also, make sure the microphone's not right next to the computer so it doesn't pick up the fan noise. Scooter also recommended keeping your mic cord away from your power cord.
2. Record a demo to make sure it all sounds right.
A few years ago I was videotaping one of our executives. While he was rambling on I noticed that the mic was turned off. After he was finished, I told that it sounded great and now we'd do it for real. He wasn't too happy.
Record a quick demo to make sure that everything is working as it should. Also, I recommend shutting down other applications that are not necessary at that moment. I've been doing this stuff for years and it never fails that when you work with multimedia you put a strain on your computer's resources which can impact your recording session.
3. Listen to the audio playback with headphones.
Headphones help isolate the audio and you'll be able to hear any problems with the narration better than if you listen with speakers. This is especially true if you're using a laptop because their speakers tend to be subpar and kind of tinny.
4. Don't get distracted with animations and annotations.
If you're recording your audio using the rapid elearning software odds are that you're also syncing animations and annotations with it. I tend to get distracted trying to time the animations with the narration and it is noticeable in my narration.
I usually record the narration first, and then go back and sync the animations. This helps me focus on capturing the best narration possible without being distracted trying to time the animations.
5. Make sure your script is conversational and easy to read.
Practice reading it a few times to make sure it flows right. Look for words or phrases where you might stumble while recording.
As far as the actual script, some people read from the computer screen. I prefer printing out the script. If you do too, don't squeeze everything into a tight paragraph with an 8 point font. Leave enough white space so it's easy on the eyes. Also, make sure that the room is well lit so that the script can easily be read.
In the comments section, Dana Thomas makes a good point about where to place the script while recording That's a major consideration, because you want to be comfortable while reading.
6. Stand up while recording.
You'll feel more energized and be able to breathe better. If you do sit, don't slouch. Sit up straight and keep your chin out. Don't let it drop to your chest.
7. Don't ad-lib.
Stick to the script and don't ad-lib. Odds are that you'll have to do multiple takes. If you ad-lib, you'll rarely have the same break points for editing. Sticking with the script lets you follow along with the audio and find a common edit point on re-takes.
8. Have plenty of liquids available.
Keep your vocal chords hydrated with clear liquids like water or a mild tea. Someone once told me to keep it at room temperature rather than cold. Avoid coffee, carbonated beverages, and milk products.
9. Get rid of the plosives.
Plosives are consonant sounds that create the famous "popping p's." You can buy shields that sit in front of your mic to block out the offending sound. It's easy enough to build one yourself using a wire ring and panty hose. Here's a great tutorial to build your own mic screen
Kat Keesling has some good tips for getting rid of the plosives Many of the comments suggested that you speak over the mic rather into to avoid pushing air onto the mic.
10. Record 10 seconds of silence.
By recording some silence, you have a way to sample just the ambient noise and use a noise removal process to filter it out later. If you happen to have ambient noise (like an air conditioner) you'll be able to filter some of that out. I've also used the ambient noise as a way to fill in gaps of silence so that the audio edits are a bit more seamless.
11. Relax and don't rush your words.
Practice reading the script. Create a conversational tone. Pretend like you're talking to someone rather than just reading a script. If you mess up, leave a noticeable pause and keep on going. It's easy enough to cut the error out of the audio.
12. Mark your retakes.
If you do multiple takes or start and stop, leave some sort of marker. A good simple way to do this is to leave about 5 seconds of silence (so that it's easy to find when you look at the wave form) and then indicate what it is, like slide four, take two…”
13. Dampen the sound.
There were some good comments on dampening the sound behind the narrator to avoid the audio bouncing into the microphone rather than dampening the sound in front. That makes sense to me. Sonnie recommended using two pillows. If it works for assassins who can quiet gunshots, there's no reason it can't work for you.
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Record Retro Drum Sounds
Tired of drums sounding big, wide and boring. Turn back the clock with us as we re-create drum sounds from the '50s, '60s and '70s.
Tutorial: Michael Carpenter
The diversity of our auditory preferences always amazes me. Sometimes we want to hear the highest of high-fidelity sounds. Hairs standing on end, ‘voice of the gods' sort of stuff. So sonically pure that our brains immediately start humming in tune with the sensation of ‘good sound'. Then there'll be other times, when we hear a sound that is ‘effective', but hardly what you would call hi-fi. It just sounds cool.
Often we hear old records and intuitively pick up on the ‘retro' vibe. A big part of that is the way sounds were coloured — whether on purpose or not — by the recording process. Yet artists are often really thinking about drum sounds when they come into my studio requesting a retro approach. So let's get retrospective and see if we can deconstruct, reconstruct and bring out the colour of drum sounds from bygone eras.
RETRO PERSPECTIVE
We've become so used to big, glossy contemporary drum production, that we tend to define ‘retro' drums as being the antithesis to that; unpolished, or raw. Certainly, compared to the massaged, layered and controlled techniques of state-of-the-art modern records, this would be true. But when people come into the studio asking for a vintage approach, what they're really asking for is something beyond simply lo-fi; they're looking for character. It's the same with photography. The first thing we do after snapping an image on our phones is apply a filter to it. The quality of the original image is usually good enough in itself, but a filter ‘colours' that moment. Whether we fade it a tad, or add a vignette, it says something about us.
In a musical sense, the artist or producer is asserting a sense of personality on their production, because it says something more definitive about their creation than just a ‘nice' sound.
As much as we'd all like to just fast forward to the bit where I tell you how to get that magical Mick Fleetwood sound. For us to approach this effectively we need some basic info on how the originals were recorded and what we're listening for.
As a producer who is also a drummer, I've been a long-time student of drum sounds and record production. I've found that the more I know about the original approaches, the more authentic my results are when emulating them in a contemporary setting. It's beyond the scope of this article to give you a complete history of Western Pop recording techniques, but
I will break it down into a few very general time frames and fill in a few gaps about the general recording approaches for each era.
STEP 1: THE RIGHT KIT
The most important parts of achieving any of these drum sounds are right at the source. The drum kit needs to be setup and tuned for the style, and the player needs to understand the concept of playing to the mics. For anyone trying to get in the ballpark for the first time, it's worth spending time looking at images on the web of drummers (and their kits) of the era you're interested in.
For sounds up to the late '60s, it was at most a simple four-piece kit, usually with two full heads on the bass drum and almost no dampening, except some felt strips. The snares were almost always five-inches deep, and there were usually only two large crash/ride cymbals that weren't hit very hard. If you're using a kit with a big fat deep snare, a bass drum with a big pillow on it, five toms and six cymbals, you're making your job a lot more difficult. And if your drummer is a basher, smashing out quarter notes on the hi-hats, with a weak snare backbeat and a zillion drum fills, you're going to struggle to get an authentic Motown sound.
The point is that appropriateness will yield plenty of sonic options from any mic combination you use. And don't be scared of how odd your drums might sound in the room. We have a bunch of drums that we keep tuned a particular way (including a kid's toy kit) because we know under a certain combination of mics, they'll sound a particular shade of incredible.
Throughout this article, there are some specific modifications to both the kit and to the drummer's approach that will guide you towards the right combinations of approaches. Still, your best asset will always be your ears. Learn to listen through those old records for your best chance of figuring out why they've become so iconic.
In the '50s, the idea was to position the single overhead mic so it captured the whole kit.
THE EARLY ROCK 'N' ROLL ERA
Key listening tracks:
Lucille - Little Richard
Shake - Sam Cooke
Twist & Shout - The Beatles
It's good to listen to the stereo version of Twist & Shout first, because one channel is actually the close mics, and the other channel is just the vocal spill. Only then listen to the mono version, and you'll hear how much excitement is coming from the sound of the spill into the vocal mics.
The first stop in our way-back machine is just prior to 1960. Looking around the studio at that time, the first thing you would have noticed is that all the musicians were in the live room. No one was lounging in the control room with a DI'd guitar or MIDI keyboard. The complete ensemble was picked up live off the studio floor, balanced in the control room and printed to tape (usually single track, rarely two- or three-track multitrack) as one performance — no overdubs. There may have been only one mic on the whole kit, possibly two.
A big contributor to the drum sound on big band, jazz, and early rock 'n' roll records, was spill. A lot of what you're hearing is the band bleeding into each other's mics, particularly into the vocalist's.
Of course, there were no headphones at this point, so players were balancing their performances purely by the sound in the recording space. Crucially, the drummer had to learn to play to what the microphones were hearing — all of them, not just those over the drums. Whether that meant playing quietly, putting a wallet on the snare, or not hitting the crash cymbals. It was a case of deferring to the engineer's instruction, which the good musicians quickly adapted to. The engineer would say something to the effect of, ‘if you play too hard, and hit the ride cymbal in the chorus, you'll ruin the whole mix.' Critical point number one: play to the mics.
Equally important in the '50s is spill. In the distance, about eight metres away from this drummer's view, you can catch one of the room mics that's emulating the spill from a trumpeter, vocalist, you name it.
Here's another ‘single mic-only' drum position, effective for that ‘Motown' sound…
…and one more mono position — from the top this time — with that floppy wallet snare dampening.
The next thing to remember, is that because of spill, room sound was inescapable in these early recordings. Mics were pointed in all sorts of directions around these reasonably large rooms. So drums were bleeding into the piano mics at the other end of the room, the upright bass mic, the vocalist, the string and horn sections. I've read accounts from engineers at the time where they didn't use the mic that was on the drums because the drums were loud enough in every other mic when balancing down to mono.
Finally, it's important to take into account the quality of the recording equipment at the time. It's sometimes difficult to get contemporary recordists to comprehend that, once upon a time, recording engineers had very little equipment. And what they had wasn't always particularly versatile.
In the '50s, they were dealing with lovely new Neumanns (regularly the valve varieties), reasonably recent ribbon mics (15-20 years in use), and the introduction of dynamic mics. But the consoles were often purpose-built four or eight channel valve consoles, with either no EQ, or very simple bass and treble controls. More advanced EQ functions, like a sweepable mid frequency, were outboard pieces that were patched in when needed, and there were only a few modified radio-style compressors used to keep volume levels in check going to tape.
Engineers were also at the mercy of all of the analogue tape process's artefacts; alignment issues, tape hiss, as well as overloading the tape machine's circuitry and the tape itself.
The expectation was that the sounds would be right in the room, then the mics would pick the sound up and send it through the console as transparently as all those highly-coloured components would allow. The hope was that at the end of the day, playback off the tape would resemble something close to the event. In a nutshell, nothing near the fidelity of a contemporary recording system.
HOW TO GET THAT LATE '50s SOUND:
Apart from making sure we use the absolute right kit, see sidebar Step 1: The Right Kit, some techniques to get close to this sound would include:
Don't use many mics on the drums themselves, perhaps only one over the whole kit.
Remember, at this early stage of drum recording, no one considered the drums as individual elements — kick, snare, toms, etc. One mic was placed in a central position to pick up the sound of the whole kit. Ribbon mics were great for this, as the weight from the bottom end of the kit was emphasised, and the duller top end helped tame the cymbals. Listen for a mic position that gives you a balance of the whole kit.
Then scatter a number of mics of different varieties around the room, pointed in different directions; away from the kit at a distance, into a corner, aimed at the glass on your window, or pointing down at the floor. Imagine there's an ensemble coming into your room, and you're putting one mic up for each instrument. You may use a ribbon mic for where the horns would be. A condenser for the rear of the upright piano. Maybe a dynamic where the singer would be.
The idea here is to simulate spill — open mics around the room picking up the sound of the room, but not in a ‘drum-conscious' way. So experiment with these and see which ones give you the greatest sense of ‘drums in a room'.
Get the drummer to play at the volume he'd need to play if he had a live singer in the room with no foldback. Tell him to back off on the fills and the cymbals, and make it all about the groove.
When listening back to the various mics, only listen in mono, perhaps putting a high-pass filter at 100Hz and a low pass at 8-10kHz on every mic. Don't be scared to submix all the tracks to a mono auxiliary and treat the sound with light compression or even a saturation/distortion type plug in. Balance all the mics up until you get a sound that can be described as ‘character-filled'.
The early '60s added another dynamic kick mic to go with the overhead mic position for a bit more bottom end. It was a closer sound than the previous era, but as you can see here, not too close.
EARLY '60s INITIAL DAYS OF MULTITRACK
Key listening tracks:
Mr Tambourine Man - The Byrds
Heatwave - Martha and The Vandelles
The '60s ushered in some pretty significant changes. Though Les Paul and others experimented with sound-on-sound recording in the early '50s (essentially, playing one mono tape into a mixer, and recording another part at the same time to another mono machine), true overdubbing facilities only started to appear on three-track machines in the very late '50s.
The initial benefit was that orchestras could be overdubbed. Tracking sessions soon involved having the ensemble balanced onto one track while the singer, also performing live, was recorded to a second track. The orchestra would then be overdubbed onto the third track — a massive change at the time. As the first four-track machines started to hit in the early '60s, this practice remained intact. Ensembles, including singers, still performed live in one space, and occasionally the additional tracks were used for ‘sweetening' — adding horns, strings or backing vocals. The pre-'60s practice of self-balancing remained.
The first major change ushered in by the rock 'n' roll era was that singers could monitor themselves through ‘monitor speakers' to compete with the louder guitar amps that had also popped up. Drummers started to play harder and used more cymbals to mirror the live experience, prompting engineers to begin looking at new ways to convey this live experience to tape. Basically, everyone got louder.
This manifested in some small but important changes. Large diaphragm condenser mics were replaced as the main ‘drum kit' mic with either a ribbon mic to tame the cymbals, or a dynamic mic to protect the more fragile/expensive mics from flailing drum sticks. A kick drum mic became compulsory too. Though in this early stage the front head was still on the drum, and engineers, concerned with the amount of air pumped out of this bigger drum, placed the mic no closer than a metre from the head.
In the control room, things changed as well. The valve consoles had to be upgraded to handle the four-track recorder functionality. In many situations, a compressor was placed between the bussed output of the console and the tape machine, to protect the tape from overloading. It meant the live tracks were submixed down to one channel, sent through a compressor and then to one track of the tape, embedding those sounds and balance into the mix forever. So a lot of time was taken to get the balances and interaction between the elements and the compressor right before they hit tape.
HOW TO GET THAT EARLY '60s SOUND
Let the drums ring; take out or reduce the dampening in the kick drum, and use a full head on the front of the drum. Tune the drums up a bit higher than you'd expect, particularly the toms. Open up the hi-hats a bit more.
Play a bit harder.
Use two dynamic mics for the kit — one out the front of the kick and one at cymbal height pointing towards the centre of the kit, so that the cymbals are pointing at the side of the mic. Move your cymbal setup around so you only have a crash and a ride.
With this setup, you are again listening for drum kit coverage. By this point, engineers were looking for a little more ‘focus' out of the mics, hence the addition of a dedicated kick mic.
With these two mics, you're getting a better representation of the close quality of the drums.
Place another mic or two — condensers or ribbons — a few metres back from the kit, and point them in the opposite direction.
With these mics, you're strictly imitating the sound of open vocal mics. Pointed away from the drum kit, they'll pick up drum spill and ambience. By themselves they should sound unfocused and ambient. Mixed in with the above close mics, you get that authentic crunch.
Do the high/low-pass trick mentioned above. Submix all the channels into a single auxiliary through a compressor with a moderate attack, release and threshold so the kit glues together rather than pumps. Readjust the balance once you hear the effects of the compressor, as this process will (and should) change your balance.
MID '60s TO EARLY '70s IT'S ALL ABOUT COVERAGE
Key listening tracks:
Respect - Aretha Franklin
Hello Goodbye - The Beatles
California Dreaming - The Mamas & the Papas
As pop music was taking over the world in the mid '60s, there were also massive changes in recording technology. For one, by the end of the decade, stereo pipped mono for pop's preferred format. As pop records and productions grew in creativity, so did the compulsion to innovate.
Producers started to use the extra room on four-track machines for more content. As they discovered reduction mixes (bouncing down a mix of four tracks to another four-track machine to free up more tracks for overdubbing) there became more demand for a clearer focus on the drums. Also, vocalists didn't necessarily track live with the ensemble anymore, which reduced or almost completely eradicated the ambience and spill which had been such a big part of a record's sound up to that point.
Combined with slightly more detailed EQ on consoles, more input channels and routing options, different compressor choices (the earliest 1176 incarnations arrived around this point, as well as The Beatles' heavy use of Fairchild compression), and advances in tape formulations and machines, records just started to sound better. They became much more tonally focused, with a greater sense of the close mics rather than the ambience of single-track ensemble recording. Later, eight-track recording unshackled the engineers, often resulting in a whole tape track set aside for drums!
Add a few more mics for that late '60s sound, and chuck a wallet full of cash on the snare for dampening.
Engineers still shied away from moving the mics as close as we do today — there were all sorts of concerns about overloading mics and consoles by getting too close to the drums. But they did start adding additional mics. Initially it was to represent the kit more faithfully, but became more creative as the decade rolled on. For example, engineers started to put mics somewhere in the vicinity of the toms. Often underneath the rack tom, and another somewhere vaguely over the floor tom. If they felt they weren't getting the presence of the snare, they'd put a mic underneath the snare and add treble to increase the snap of the drum as it headed into its submix, before compression and prior to hitting tape.
Engineers blatantly broke the previous generation's rules of miking up, and just put mics in key places, leading to plenty of experimentation with positioning. Remember, there was possibly a condenser on the overhead and snare bottom, but in every other position a standard dynamic mic was typically used.
As things developed, there were inevitably questions about drum setups and parts. Engineers were always looking for ways to get the maximum sound with the smallest amount of mics, which meant positioning became critical. Engineers experimented with pointing mics at the fulcrum of the kit between the snare and the kick drum, or at the side of the snare underneath the hi-hat, or indeed, a single mic on the floor pointing vaguely at the kick drum and bottom of the snare, often requiring the rack tom and all cymbals be removed.
Drummers were starting to control their drums a lot more — taking the front head off the bass drum and putting a pillow or blanket against the single head for a more focused sound. Placing a wallet or something heavy on the snare to reduce the ringing of the drum. In the latter part of the '60s they even muffled the drums with tea towels or rags to totally control the sound.
In this vital and influential era, it was all about experimenting with both the drums and the techniques used to capture them. Yet undeniably, focus was in, and ambience was most definitely out.
HOW TO GET THAT MID TO LATE '60s DRUM SOUND:
Start using more mics closer to the kit, but not as close as you would for a contemporary kit. Think more about ‘coverage' of the drum sounds. Possibly start with a kick mic (dynamic, right in the drum) a snare bottom mic quite close to the bottom snares (a dynamic or pencil condenser) and a condenser as an overhead. Place dynamic mics underneath the rack tom by about 30cm, and above the floor tom by about the same distance and pointed more towards the snare.
Take off the front head of the bass drum and deaden the sound. Drop the tuning of the snare a little more, but deaden the snare with a wallet or a folded up cloth. Tighten up the snares underneath, and possibly use masking tape (don't use gaffer tape, it'll tear the bottom head) on them to make the sound of the drum resonance free, with a short sharp snap to it. Tune the toms a little deeper, with maximum resonance. Use smaller, more ‘standard' cymbal sizes.
Get your drummer to play at a moderate to quiet volume, laying off on the cymbals. For that Motown/Stax sound, don't be scared to remove all toms and crash/ride cymbals, and just focus on the groove, using only one or two mics in unusual places to capture the whole kit.
Avoid ambience mics completely, and focus more on the closer mics, even keeping the overhead mic moderately low in the overall mix.
Submix all tracks to a mono auxiliary. Insert a compressor plug-in with a faster attack and release, and higher ratio. Adjust the release so the kick drum is pumping against the cymbals. Rebalance the close mics so the kick and snare are upfront and clear and a little crunchy. Add an EQ after the compressor to accentuate the low bottom end, and possibly highlight the high mids (around 4-6kHz) while low pass filtering around 10kHz. Don't be scared to experiment with saturation/distortion plug-ins. Distortion and overdriving equipment was par for the course at this point, and is a key part of the sound of this era.
Mic positions for that tight close mic sound positioning, with kit dampeners in place.
THE '70s & BEYOND 24 TRACKS & TOTAL CONTROL
Key listening tracks:
Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
Jive Talking - The Bee Gees
Close To You - The Carpenters
By the time we hit the '70s, very quickly 16-track, then 24-track became the norm. Recording as an ensemble was no longer needed, as each instrument had its own tracks. The drums were spread out over four to six tracks, allowing for more control in the mixing process. Compressing to tape became less critical. Studios that were once big, open recording spaces started to be partitioned off for a more controlled sound, allowing for increased creative options at mix time. Valve consoles were replaced with transistor-based versions, with greater EQ and routing flexibility, allowing the drums to be sculpted tonally. Drums were made tonally dead, with bottom heads starting to be taken off toms and mics put inside the drums, or gated heavily for greater separation. Drummers devised all kinds of ways to muffle, mute and control every ambience and resonance from the kit, including copious amounts of gaffer tape, or pieces of felt that flopped up as the drum was struck and rested back on the head. Drums were tuned deeper for a fatter tone. Small diaphragm condensers became the norm for overheads and hi hats, and producers were looking for a more hi-fi approach to drum recording. It was all about a controlled, focused, deep, percussive tone that screamed ‘high quality'. Ambience was generally a thing of the past.
HOW TO GET THAT '70s CLASSIC ROCK SOUND
The deader you can tune and mute your drums, the better. Use much smaller cymbals for punctuation rather than explosive accents. Even put some light tape on the ride cymbal to make it a nice dry percussive hit without much wash. Don't be scared to extend the hi-hat stand to its maximum height and drop the height of the snare to get as much separation as possible — or even move the hi-hat a bit further away from the snare. It may be less comfortable for the drummer, but will make the snare sound purer, and make it easier to work with.
Think massive drum kits — four or more toms were the rule rather than the exception. It wasn't unusual to see four mics close to the cymbals, submixed to a stereo pair; a mic on each tom, submixed to a stereo pair; plus a kick and snare track, sometimes with two mics on each submixed.
It's all about the close mics.
Once again, tell your drummer to play to the mics, which often means playing a bit quieter than normal. There are stories of legendary studio drummers who rarely played loudly, instead focusing on consistency of drum hits. Any sort of rimshots on the snare should be avoided — it's all about consistent hits in the centre of the head. The whole effect is a drier, completely focused and controllable tone at all times.
When mixing the sounds, it's all about clarity. Gate the snare and mute the silences on the toms. Sculpt the sounds of the kick and snare. Add high mids to the toms for extra definition. High-pass filter the cymbals and hi-hats aggressively, and keep them reasonably low in the mix. Insert a compressor on the kick and snare, and place one on a drum submix too, but with a low ratio and moderate attack/release. You're just using it to tighten up things rather than change the tone.
POST PRODUCTION
Occasionally you'll want to give contemporary-sounding kits or loops a retro overhaul. Here are a few simple tips to unsterilise your sounds and make them a bit more fun. When dealing with a kit's individual tracks, start by submixing them into a stereo or preferably mono submix and treating the drums as one instrument.
One of the first, most simple tools is EQ. A lot of vintage gear was relatively lo-fi in comparison to today's tools, so a few basic EQ tweaks can overhaul sounds completely. High- and low-pass filtering immediately reduces the fidelity. Finding the right gnarly frequency in the midrange, with a fairly wide Q, can give your tracks a certain ‘honk' synonymous with vintage tone. Experiment and play around, keeping in mind that a lot of these sounds weren't hi-fi to start with.
Next, apply compression. There were so many different levels of compression happening throughout the process. Preamps being pushed beyond their design. Compressors inserted into busses pre-tape. Tape compression itself was a big factor too, often squishing off the transients as records were tracked further into the red. So it's worth experimenting with lots of different ratios and attack/release times, as well as both compression and limiting. For the earlier stuff, you'll be looking at lower ratios, and longer attack and release times — you could use presets in your compressors similar to those you would use on a master bus.
For a mid '60s flavour, set much more aggressive attack and release times to pump the cymbals. This works a treat, especially in combination with a reasonably aggressive limiter to squish the transients. You'll hear a dramatic change to the sound of your tracks, but that's the idea.
For late '60s and '70s, return to more transparent compression to glue the tracks together. Lower ratios and moderate-fast attack and release settings will tighten things up without squishing the sound too much. A little limiting to flatten out the transients will be handy too.
Last but not least is distortion. Everything from tape saturation, to overdriving compressors, to vinyl plug-ins, to distortion pedals. There's a lot of distortion on these pre-'70s records, everything was being pushed too hard — mics, consoles and tape machines. If you listen to Motown records, for example, they're sublimely overdriven. Having a blend control can be handy to dial in just the right amount of grit. But don't be shy about it. This can be crucial for getting your grooves sounding spot on.
THE EXCEPTIONS
Of course, there are always exceptions to every genre. In the early '60s, Phil Spector took to drum recording with a '50s approach. In the '70s, drummers like John Bonham and Roger Taylor tuned their kits to sound like Big Band drummers of the '40s and '50s. Nevertheless this should give you a general guideline to the way engineers captured the drums over a critical period in pop history.
Essentially, when approaching retro drums, you have to break down your own preconceived ideas of how drums should be played and recorded. Once you do that, you can get really creative with the way your drum sounds present in your records. It may just be the thing that separates you from everyone else.
Tutorial: Michael Carpenter
The diversity of our auditory preferences always amazes me. Sometimes we want to hear the highest of high-fidelity sounds. Hairs standing on end, ‘voice of the gods' sort of stuff. So sonically pure that our brains immediately start humming in tune with the sensation of ‘good sound'. Then there'll be other times, when we hear a sound that is ‘effective', but hardly what you would call hi-fi. It just sounds cool.
Often we hear old records and intuitively pick up on the ‘retro' vibe. A big part of that is the way sounds were coloured — whether on purpose or not — by the recording process. Yet artists are often really thinking about drum sounds when they come into my studio requesting a retro approach. So let's get retrospective and see if we can deconstruct, reconstruct and bring out the colour of drum sounds from bygone eras.
RETRO PERSPECTIVE
We've become so used to big, glossy contemporary drum production, that we tend to define ‘retro' drums as being the antithesis to that; unpolished, or raw. Certainly, compared to the massaged, layered and controlled techniques of state-of-the-art modern records, this would be true. But when people come into the studio asking for a vintage approach, what they're really asking for is something beyond simply lo-fi; they're looking for character. It's the same with photography. The first thing we do after snapping an image on our phones is apply a filter to it. The quality of the original image is usually good enough in itself, but a filter ‘colours' that moment. Whether we fade it a tad, or add a vignette, it says something about us.
In a musical sense, the artist or producer is asserting a sense of personality on their production, because it says something more definitive about their creation than just a ‘nice' sound.
As much as we'd all like to just fast forward to the bit where I tell you how to get that magical Mick Fleetwood sound. For us to approach this effectively we need some basic info on how the originals were recorded and what we're listening for.
As a producer who is also a drummer, I've been a long-time student of drum sounds and record production. I've found that the more I know about the original approaches, the more authentic my results are when emulating them in a contemporary setting. It's beyond the scope of this article to give you a complete history of Western Pop recording techniques, but
I will break it down into a few very general time frames and fill in a few gaps about the general recording approaches for each era.
STEP 1: THE RIGHT KIT
The most important parts of achieving any of these drum sounds are right at the source. The drum kit needs to be setup and tuned for the style, and the player needs to understand the concept of playing to the mics. For anyone trying to get in the ballpark for the first time, it's worth spending time looking at images on the web of drummers (and their kits) of the era you're interested in.
For sounds up to the late '60s, it was at most a simple four-piece kit, usually with two full heads on the bass drum and almost no dampening, except some felt strips. The snares were almost always five-inches deep, and there were usually only two large crash/ride cymbals that weren't hit very hard. If you're using a kit with a big fat deep snare, a bass drum with a big pillow on it, five toms and six cymbals, you're making your job a lot more difficult. And if your drummer is a basher, smashing out quarter notes on the hi-hats, with a weak snare backbeat and a zillion drum fills, you're going to struggle to get an authentic Motown sound.
The point is that appropriateness will yield plenty of sonic options from any mic combination you use. And don't be scared of how odd your drums might sound in the room. We have a bunch of drums that we keep tuned a particular way (including a kid's toy kit) because we know under a certain combination of mics, they'll sound a particular shade of incredible.
Throughout this article, there are some specific modifications to both the kit and to the drummer's approach that will guide you towards the right combinations of approaches. Still, your best asset will always be your ears. Learn to listen through those old records for your best chance of figuring out why they've become so iconic.
In the '50s, the idea was to position the single overhead mic so it captured the whole kit.
THE EARLY ROCK 'N' ROLL ERA
Key listening tracks:
Lucille - Little Richard
Shake - Sam Cooke
Twist & Shout - The Beatles
It's good to listen to the stereo version of Twist & Shout first, because one channel is actually the close mics, and the other channel is just the vocal spill. Only then listen to the mono version, and you'll hear how much excitement is coming from the sound of the spill into the vocal mics.
The first stop in our way-back machine is just prior to 1960. Looking around the studio at that time, the first thing you would have noticed is that all the musicians were in the live room. No one was lounging in the control room with a DI'd guitar or MIDI keyboard. The complete ensemble was picked up live off the studio floor, balanced in the control room and printed to tape (usually single track, rarely two- or three-track multitrack) as one performance — no overdubs. There may have been only one mic on the whole kit, possibly two.
A big contributor to the drum sound on big band, jazz, and early rock 'n' roll records, was spill. A lot of what you're hearing is the band bleeding into each other's mics, particularly into the vocalist's.
Of course, there were no headphones at this point, so players were balancing their performances purely by the sound in the recording space. Crucially, the drummer had to learn to play to what the microphones were hearing — all of them, not just those over the drums. Whether that meant playing quietly, putting a wallet on the snare, or not hitting the crash cymbals. It was a case of deferring to the engineer's instruction, which the good musicians quickly adapted to. The engineer would say something to the effect of, ‘if you play too hard, and hit the ride cymbal in the chorus, you'll ruin the whole mix.' Critical point number one: play to the mics.
Equally important in the '50s is spill. In the distance, about eight metres away from this drummer's view, you can catch one of the room mics that's emulating the spill from a trumpeter, vocalist, you name it.
Here's another ‘single mic-only' drum position, effective for that ‘Motown' sound…
…and one more mono position — from the top this time — with that floppy wallet snare dampening.
The next thing to remember, is that because of spill, room sound was inescapable in these early recordings. Mics were pointed in all sorts of directions around these reasonably large rooms. So drums were bleeding into the piano mics at the other end of the room, the upright bass mic, the vocalist, the string and horn sections. I've read accounts from engineers at the time where they didn't use the mic that was on the drums because the drums were loud enough in every other mic when balancing down to mono.
Finally, it's important to take into account the quality of the recording equipment at the time. It's sometimes difficult to get contemporary recordists to comprehend that, once upon a time, recording engineers had very little equipment. And what they had wasn't always particularly versatile.
In the '50s, they were dealing with lovely new Neumanns (regularly the valve varieties), reasonably recent ribbon mics (15-20 years in use), and the introduction of dynamic mics. But the consoles were often purpose-built four or eight channel valve consoles, with either no EQ, or very simple bass and treble controls. More advanced EQ functions, like a sweepable mid frequency, were outboard pieces that were patched in when needed, and there were only a few modified radio-style compressors used to keep volume levels in check going to tape.
Engineers were also at the mercy of all of the analogue tape process's artefacts; alignment issues, tape hiss, as well as overloading the tape machine's circuitry and the tape itself.
The expectation was that the sounds would be right in the room, then the mics would pick the sound up and send it through the console as transparently as all those highly-coloured components would allow. The hope was that at the end of the day, playback off the tape would resemble something close to the event. In a nutshell, nothing near the fidelity of a contemporary recording system.
HOW TO GET THAT LATE '50s SOUND:
Apart from making sure we use the absolute right kit, see sidebar Step 1: The Right Kit, some techniques to get close to this sound would include:
Don't use many mics on the drums themselves, perhaps only one over the whole kit.
Remember, at this early stage of drum recording, no one considered the drums as individual elements — kick, snare, toms, etc. One mic was placed in a central position to pick up the sound of the whole kit. Ribbon mics were great for this, as the weight from the bottom end of the kit was emphasised, and the duller top end helped tame the cymbals. Listen for a mic position that gives you a balance of the whole kit.
Then scatter a number of mics of different varieties around the room, pointed in different directions; away from the kit at a distance, into a corner, aimed at the glass on your window, or pointing down at the floor. Imagine there's an ensemble coming into your room, and you're putting one mic up for each instrument. You may use a ribbon mic for where the horns would be. A condenser for the rear of the upright piano. Maybe a dynamic where the singer would be.
The idea here is to simulate spill — open mics around the room picking up the sound of the room, but not in a ‘drum-conscious' way. So experiment with these and see which ones give you the greatest sense of ‘drums in a room'.
Get the drummer to play at the volume he'd need to play if he had a live singer in the room with no foldback. Tell him to back off on the fills and the cymbals, and make it all about the groove.
When listening back to the various mics, only listen in mono, perhaps putting a high-pass filter at 100Hz and a low pass at 8-10kHz on every mic. Don't be scared to submix all the tracks to a mono auxiliary and treat the sound with light compression or even a saturation/distortion type plug in. Balance all the mics up until you get a sound that can be described as ‘character-filled'.
The early '60s added another dynamic kick mic to go with the overhead mic position for a bit more bottom end. It was a closer sound than the previous era, but as you can see here, not too close.
EARLY '60s INITIAL DAYS OF MULTITRACK
Key listening tracks:
Mr Tambourine Man - The Byrds
Heatwave - Martha and The Vandelles
The '60s ushered in some pretty significant changes. Though Les Paul and others experimented with sound-on-sound recording in the early '50s (essentially, playing one mono tape into a mixer, and recording another part at the same time to another mono machine), true overdubbing facilities only started to appear on three-track machines in the very late '50s.
The initial benefit was that orchestras could be overdubbed. Tracking sessions soon involved having the ensemble balanced onto one track while the singer, also performing live, was recorded to a second track. The orchestra would then be overdubbed onto the third track — a massive change at the time. As the first four-track machines started to hit in the early '60s, this practice remained intact. Ensembles, including singers, still performed live in one space, and occasionally the additional tracks were used for ‘sweetening' — adding horns, strings or backing vocals. The pre-'60s practice of self-balancing remained.
The first major change ushered in by the rock 'n' roll era was that singers could monitor themselves through ‘monitor speakers' to compete with the louder guitar amps that had also popped up. Drummers started to play harder and used more cymbals to mirror the live experience, prompting engineers to begin looking at new ways to convey this live experience to tape. Basically, everyone got louder.
This manifested in some small but important changes. Large diaphragm condenser mics were replaced as the main ‘drum kit' mic with either a ribbon mic to tame the cymbals, or a dynamic mic to protect the more fragile/expensive mics from flailing drum sticks. A kick drum mic became compulsory too. Though in this early stage the front head was still on the drum, and engineers, concerned with the amount of air pumped out of this bigger drum, placed the mic no closer than a metre from the head.
In the control room, things changed as well. The valve consoles had to be upgraded to handle the four-track recorder functionality. In many situations, a compressor was placed between the bussed output of the console and the tape machine, to protect the tape from overloading. It meant the live tracks were submixed down to one channel, sent through a compressor and then to one track of the tape, embedding those sounds and balance into the mix forever. So a lot of time was taken to get the balances and interaction between the elements and the compressor right before they hit tape.
HOW TO GET THAT EARLY '60s SOUND
Let the drums ring; take out or reduce the dampening in the kick drum, and use a full head on the front of the drum. Tune the drums up a bit higher than you'd expect, particularly the toms. Open up the hi-hats a bit more.
Play a bit harder.
Use two dynamic mics for the kit — one out the front of the kick and one at cymbal height pointing towards the centre of the kit, so that the cymbals are pointing at the side of the mic. Move your cymbal setup around so you only have a crash and a ride.
With this setup, you are again listening for drum kit coverage. By this point, engineers were looking for a little more ‘focus' out of the mics, hence the addition of a dedicated kick mic.
With these two mics, you're getting a better representation of the close quality of the drums.
Place another mic or two — condensers or ribbons — a few metres back from the kit, and point them in the opposite direction.
With these mics, you're strictly imitating the sound of open vocal mics. Pointed away from the drum kit, they'll pick up drum spill and ambience. By themselves they should sound unfocused and ambient. Mixed in with the above close mics, you get that authentic crunch.
Do the high/low-pass trick mentioned above. Submix all the channels into a single auxiliary through a compressor with a moderate attack, release and threshold so the kit glues together rather than pumps. Readjust the balance once you hear the effects of the compressor, as this process will (and should) change your balance.
MID '60s TO EARLY '70s IT'S ALL ABOUT COVERAGE
Key listening tracks:
Respect - Aretha Franklin
Hello Goodbye - The Beatles
California Dreaming - The Mamas & the Papas
As pop music was taking over the world in the mid '60s, there were also massive changes in recording technology. For one, by the end of the decade, stereo pipped mono for pop's preferred format. As pop records and productions grew in creativity, so did the compulsion to innovate.
Producers started to use the extra room on four-track machines for more content. As they discovered reduction mixes (bouncing down a mix of four tracks to another four-track machine to free up more tracks for overdubbing) there became more demand for a clearer focus on the drums. Also, vocalists didn't necessarily track live with the ensemble anymore, which reduced or almost completely eradicated the ambience and spill which had been such a big part of a record's sound up to that point.
Combined with slightly more detailed EQ on consoles, more input channels and routing options, different compressor choices (the earliest 1176 incarnations arrived around this point, as well as The Beatles' heavy use of Fairchild compression), and advances in tape formulations and machines, records just started to sound better. They became much more tonally focused, with a greater sense of the close mics rather than the ambience of single-track ensemble recording. Later, eight-track recording unshackled the engineers, often resulting in a whole tape track set aside for drums!
Add a few more mics for that late '60s sound, and chuck a wallet full of cash on the snare for dampening.
Engineers still shied away from moving the mics as close as we do today — there were all sorts of concerns about overloading mics and consoles by getting too close to the drums. But they did start adding additional mics. Initially it was to represent the kit more faithfully, but became more creative as the decade rolled on. For example, engineers started to put mics somewhere in the vicinity of the toms. Often underneath the rack tom, and another somewhere vaguely over the floor tom. If they felt they weren't getting the presence of the snare, they'd put a mic underneath the snare and add treble to increase the snap of the drum as it headed into its submix, before compression and prior to hitting tape.
Engineers blatantly broke the previous generation's rules of miking up, and just put mics in key places, leading to plenty of experimentation with positioning. Remember, there was possibly a condenser on the overhead and snare bottom, but in every other position a standard dynamic mic was typically used.
As things developed, there were inevitably questions about drum setups and parts. Engineers were always looking for ways to get the maximum sound with the smallest amount of mics, which meant positioning became critical. Engineers experimented with pointing mics at the fulcrum of the kit between the snare and the kick drum, or at the side of the snare underneath the hi-hat, or indeed, a single mic on the floor pointing vaguely at the kick drum and bottom of the snare, often requiring the rack tom and all cymbals be removed.
Drummers were starting to control their drums a lot more — taking the front head off the bass drum and putting a pillow or blanket against the single head for a more focused sound. Placing a wallet or something heavy on the snare to reduce the ringing of the drum. In the latter part of the '60s they even muffled the drums with tea towels or rags to totally control the sound.
In this vital and influential era, it was all about experimenting with both the drums and the techniques used to capture them. Yet undeniably, focus was in, and ambience was most definitely out.
HOW TO GET THAT MID TO LATE '60s DRUM SOUND:
Start using more mics closer to the kit, but not as close as you would for a contemporary kit. Think more about ‘coverage' of the drum sounds. Possibly start with a kick mic (dynamic, right in the drum) a snare bottom mic quite close to the bottom snares (a dynamic or pencil condenser) and a condenser as an overhead. Place dynamic mics underneath the rack tom by about 30cm, and above the floor tom by about the same distance and pointed more towards the snare.
Take off the front head of the bass drum and deaden the sound. Drop the tuning of the snare a little more, but deaden the snare with a wallet or a folded up cloth. Tighten up the snares underneath, and possibly use masking tape (don't use gaffer tape, it'll tear the bottom head) on them to make the sound of the drum resonance free, with a short sharp snap to it. Tune the toms a little deeper, with maximum resonance. Use smaller, more ‘standard' cymbal sizes.
Get your drummer to play at a moderate to quiet volume, laying off on the cymbals. For that Motown/Stax sound, don't be scared to remove all toms and crash/ride cymbals, and just focus on the groove, using only one or two mics in unusual places to capture the whole kit.
Avoid ambience mics completely, and focus more on the closer mics, even keeping the overhead mic moderately low in the overall mix.
Submix all tracks to a mono auxiliary. Insert a compressor plug-in with a faster attack and release, and higher ratio. Adjust the release so the kick drum is pumping against the cymbals. Rebalance the close mics so the kick and snare are upfront and clear and a little crunchy. Add an EQ after the compressor to accentuate the low bottom end, and possibly highlight the high mids (around 4-6kHz) while low pass filtering around 10kHz. Don't be scared to experiment with saturation/distortion plug-ins. Distortion and overdriving equipment was par for the course at this point, and is a key part of the sound of this era.
Mic positions for that tight close mic sound positioning, with kit dampeners in place.
THE '70s & BEYOND 24 TRACKS & TOTAL CONTROL
Key listening tracks:
Rhiannon - Fleetwood Mac
Jive Talking - The Bee Gees
Close To You - The Carpenters
By the time we hit the '70s, very quickly 16-track, then 24-track became the norm. Recording as an ensemble was no longer needed, as each instrument had its own tracks. The drums were spread out over four to six tracks, allowing for more control in the mixing process. Compressing to tape became less critical. Studios that were once big, open recording spaces started to be partitioned off for a more controlled sound, allowing for increased creative options at mix time. Valve consoles were replaced with transistor-based versions, with greater EQ and routing flexibility, allowing the drums to be sculpted tonally. Drums were made tonally dead, with bottom heads starting to be taken off toms and mics put inside the drums, or gated heavily for greater separation. Drummers devised all kinds of ways to muffle, mute and control every ambience and resonance from the kit, including copious amounts of gaffer tape, or pieces of felt that flopped up as the drum was struck and rested back on the head. Drums were tuned deeper for a fatter tone. Small diaphragm condensers became the norm for overheads and hi hats, and producers were looking for a more hi-fi approach to drum recording. It was all about a controlled, focused, deep, percussive tone that screamed ‘high quality'. Ambience was generally a thing of the past.
HOW TO GET THAT '70s CLASSIC ROCK SOUND
The deader you can tune and mute your drums, the better. Use much smaller cymbals for punctuation rather than explosive accents. Even put some light tape on the ride cymbal to make it a nice dry percussive hit without much wash. Don't be scared to extend the hi-hat stand to its maximum height and drop the height of the snare to get as much separation as possible — or even move the hi-hat a bit further away from the snare. It may be less comfortable for the drummer, but will make the snare sound purer, and make it easier to work with.
Think massive drum kits — four or more toms were the rule rather than the exception. It wasn't unusual to see four mics close to the cymbals, submixed to a stereo pair; a mic on each tom, submixed to a stereo pair; plus a kick and snare track, sometimes with two mics on each submixed.
It's all about the close mics.
Once again, tell your drummer to play to the mics, which often means playing a bit quieter than normal. There are stories of legendary studio drummers who rarely played loudly, instead focusing on consistency of drum hits. Any sort of rimshots on the snare should be avoided — it's all about consistent hits in the centre of the head. The whole effect is a drier, completely focused and controllable tone at all times.
When mixing the sounds, it's all about clarity. Gate the snare and mute the silences on the toms. Sculpt the sounds of the kick and snare. Add high mids to the toms for extra definition. High-pass filter the cymbals and hi-hats aggressively, and keep them reasonably low in the mix. Insert a compressor on the kick and snare, and place one on a drum submix too, but with a low ratio and moderate attack/release. You're just using it to tighten up things rather than change the tone.
POST PRODUCTION
Occasionally you'll want to give contemporary-sounding kits or loops a retro overhaul. Here are a few simple tips to unsterilise your sounds and make them a bit more fun. When dealing with a kit's individual tracks, start by submixing them into a stereo or preferably mono submix and treating the drums as one instrument.
One of the first, most simple tools is EQ. A lot of vintage gear was relatively lo-fi in comparison to today's tools, so a few basic EQ tweaks can overhaul sounds completely. High- and low-pass filtering immediately reduces the fidelity. Finding the right gnarly frequency in the midrange, with a fairly wide Q, can give your tracks a certain ‘honk' synonymous with vintage tone. Experiment and play around, keeping in mind that a lot of these sounds weren't hi-fi to start with.
Next, apply compression. There were so many different levels of compression happening throughout the process. Preamps being pushed beyond their design. Compressors inserted into busses pre-tape. Tape compression itself was a big factor too, often squishing off the transients as records were tracked further into the red. So it's worth experimenting with lots of different ratios and attack/release times, as well as both compression and limiting. For the earlier stuff, you'll be looking at lower ratios, and longer attack and release times — you could use presets in your compressors similar to those you would use on a master bus.
For a mid '60s flavour, set much more aggressive attack and release times to pump the cymbals. This works a treat, especially in combination with a reasonably aggressive limiter to squish the transients. You'll hear a dramatic change to the sound of your tracks, but that's the idea.
For late '60s and '70s, return to more transparent compression to glue the tracks together. Lower ratios and moderate-fast attack and release settings will tighten things up without squishing the sound too much. A little limiting to flatten out the transients will be handy too.
Last but not least is distortion. Everything from tape saturation, to overdriving compressors, to vinyl plug-ins, to distortion pedals. There's a lot of distortion on these pre-'70s records, everything was being pushed too hard — mics, consoles and tape machines. If you listen to Motown records, for example, they're sublimely overdriven. Having a blend control can be handy to dial in just the right amount of grit. But don't be shy about it. This can be crucial for getting your grooves sounding spot on.
THE EXCEPTIONS
Of course, there are always exceptions to every genre. In the early '60s, Phil Spector took to drum recording with a '50s approach. In the '70s, drummers like John Bonham and Roger Taylor tuned their kits to sound like Big Band drummers of the '40s and '50s. Nevertheless this should give you a general guideline to the way engineers captured the drums over a critical period in pop history.
Essentially, when approaching retro drums, you have to break down your own preconceived ideas of how drums should be played and recorded. Once you do that, you can get really creative with the way your drum sounds present in your records. It may just be the thing that separates you from everyone else.
Friday, 23 December 2016
5 Effective Ways To Record Acoustic Guitar
The acoustic guitar is an essential instrument in a wide range of musical genres including Pop, Rock, Folk, and Country. It is also one of the most common instruments to record, as it is the foundation and backbone of many songs.
Whether the guitar needs to fit in the context of an entire band or solo as the instrument behind a vocal, the tone plays a significant role in the success of a mix.
In order to end up with a good tone for the acoustic guitar at the end of a mix, it is important to properly capture the initial performance.
Many times it's sufficient to throw up a single microphone on the guitar and capture a mono signal. In other cases the acoustic guitar needs to fill out more space in the stereo field.
However, it's not always obvious to decide how the performance should be captured and panned.
Some acoustic instruments, like drums and piano, have a natural stereo width due to their physical size and how they are typically heard.
As an example, it is logical to pan hi-hats to one side and the floor tom to the other side. It is also reasonable to pan the piano based on the musician's perspective with the lower notes on the left and the higher notes on the right.
Because there is no obvious convention as to how the acoustic guitar should be captured and panned, an audio engineer has many options. Here are five ways an acoustic guitar can be captured in stereo.
1) Vertical X/Y at the 12th Fret
When miking an acoustic guitar, a good place to start is placing the mic(s) close to the 12th fret.
This location provides a good tonal balance between low and high frequencies. It also provides a good balance between the rhythmic, percussive clarity for the instrument's strumming and the tonal sustain of the strings.
One way to use two mics to capture an acoustic guitar is to place both mics near the 12th fret.
By using an X/Y configuration, one mic can be angled toward the low strings on the guitar and one mic can be angled toward the high strings. In this case, the lower notes on the instrument will be captured at a higher amplitude in the first mic and the higher notes on the instrument will be captured at a higher amplitude in the second mic.
This technique can be a way to capture a stereo image of an acoustic guitar that resembles an acoustic piano with lower notes panned left and higher notes panned right.
If you already have a piano panned this way in your mix, you could flip the panning on the guitar so that the opposite is happening with the acoustic guitar. This is a good way to balance both low frequencies and high frequencies across the stereo field with multiple instruments.
2) Horizontal X/Y at the 12th Fret
This miking technique is a modification of the vertical X/Y at the 12th fret.
Rather than pointing one mic at the low strings and one mic at the high strings, in this technique one mic is angled toward the instrument's sound hole while the other mic is angle up the neck.
The microphone pointed toward the sound hole will capture a signal with a louder low frequency response. The microphone pointed up the neck will capture a signal with a quieter low frequency response.
This is another method to capture a performance where the spectral balance differs across the stereo field, and can compliment another instrument like piano.
In this case, lower strings and higher strings are not spread across the stereo field. Rather, the spectrum for all strings is spread across the stereo field.
3) Horizontal M/S at the 12th Fret
This technique is conceptually a combination of the previous two techniques.
One uni-directional microphone is positioned toward the neck at the 12th fret and one bi-directional microphone is positioned near the sound hole.
The bi-directional microphone should be rotated so that the front and back are perpendicular to the body of the guitar. A Mid-Side matrix is set up with the bi-directional microphone so that the front captures more of the low strings while the back captures more of the high strings.
Between the two microphones, the uni-directional microphone will capture lower frequencies at a lower amplitude than the bi-directional microphone. Therefore, blending between the two mics allows for control over the spectral balance of the captured performance.
The two signals created from the bi-directional microphone can be used to have more amplitude of the low strings on one side of the stereo field and more amplitude of the high strings on the opposite side.
Depending on the desired tonal balance, the position of the mics could be swapped so the bi-directional mic is near the 12th fret and the uni-directional near the sound hole.
4) Ambient Spaced Pair
One reason to choose a miking technique for the acoustic guitar is to have a spectral balance of tone across the stereo field. Another reason to use a stereo miking technique is to use the stereo field to add spatial depth to the instrument. This can be accomplished by using a balance of close and distant mics.
One version of this would be to use a single close mic near the 12th fret of the guitar and a spaced pair of ambient room mics.
The close mic can be panned to the center of the stereo field. Then the spaced pair of microphones can be panned left and right.
Mixing more of the close mic will push the acoustic guitar up-front in the mix.
Mixing more of the spaced pair will add depth and push the acoustic guitar back in the mix.
This technique can work well if you have a studio with a good room sound.
In many situations, other instruments are given preference to the best room in the studio while the acoustic guitar is recorded in an isolation booth. Whenever possible, spend the extra time to overdub the acoustic guitar in the best room.
5) Player's Perspective
The motivation for miking techniques used with drums and piano comes from the common way that these instruments are perceived.
A similar concept can be applied to the acoustic guitar.
In this technique, microphones can be placed in proximity to the physical location where the performer will be hearing the instrument.
One microphone can be placed near the left ear of the performer and one microphone can be placed near the right ear of the performer.
In this case, the performer's head acts as a baffle or gobo between the microphones to increase the difference in the captured signal. The captured signals by the microphones should provide a natural stereo image because they will be similar to the signals captured by the performer's ears.
Conclusion
In summary, recording an acoustic guitar can be a very creative process for an audio engineer.
There are many different options for capturing the sound of the instrument.
When it comes to stereo miking techniques, don't hesitate to experiment with different possibilities to achieve a tonal and spatial balance across the stereo field.
Eric Tarr
Eric Tarr is a musician, audio engineer, and producer based in Columbus, Ohio. Currently a Professor of Audio Engineering Technology at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.
Whether the guitar needs to fit in the context of an entire band or solo as the instrument behind a vocal, the tone plays a significant role in the success of a mix.
In order to end up with a good tone for the acoustic guitar at the end of a mix, it is important to properly capture the initial performance.
Many times it's sufficient to throw up a single microphone on the guitar and capture a mono signal. In other cases the acoustic guitar needs to fill out more space in the stereo field.
However, it's not always obvious to decide how the performance should be captured and panned.
Some acoustic instruments, like drums and piano, have a natural stereo width due to their physical size and how they are typically heard.
As an example, it is logical to pan hi-hats to one side and the floor tom to the other side. It is also reasonable to pan the piano based on the musician's perspective with the lower notes on the left and the higher notes on the right.
Because there is no obvious convention as to how the acoustic guitar should be captured and panned, an audio engineer has many options. Here are five ways an acoustic guitar can be captured in stereo.
1) Vertical X/Y at the 12th Fret
When miking an acoustic guitar, a good place to start is placing the mic(s) close to the 12th fret.
This location provides a good tonal balance between low and high frequencies. It also provides a good balance between the rhythmic, percussive clarity for the instrument's strumming and the tonal sustain of the strings.
One way to use two mics to capture an acoustic guitar is to place both mics near the 12th fret.
By using an X/Y configuration, one mic can be angled toward the low strings on the guitar and one mic can be angled toward the high strings. In this case, the lower notes on the instrument will be captured at a higher amplitude in the first mic and the higher notes on the instrument will be captured at a higher amplitude in the second mic.
This technique can be a way to capture a stereo image of an acoustic guitar that resembles an acoustic piano with lower notes panned left and higher notes panned right.
If you already have a piano panned this way in your mix, you could flip the panning on the guitar so that the opposite is happening with the acoustic guitar. This is a good way to balance both low frequencies and high frequencies across the stereo field with multiple instruments.
2) Horizontal X/Y at the 12th Fret
This miking technique is a modification of the vertical X/Y at the 12th fret.
Rather than pointing one mic at the low strings and one mic at the high strings, in this technique one mic is angled toward the instrument's sound hole while the other mic is angle up the neck.
The microphone pointed toward the sound hole will capture a signal with a louder low frequency response. The microphone pointed up the neck will capture a signal with a quieter low frequency response.
This is another method to capture a performance where the spectral balance differs across the stereo field, and can compliment another instrument like piano.
In this case, lower strings and higher strings are not spread across the stereo field. Rather, the spectrum for all strings is spread across the stereo field.
3) Horizontal M/S at the 12th Fret
This technique is conceptually a combination of the previous two techniques.
One uni-directional microphone is positioned toward the neck at the 12th fret and one bi-directional microphone is positioned near the sound hole.
The bi-directional microphone should be rotated so that the front and back are perpendicular to the body of the guitar. A Mid-Side matrix is set up with the bi-directional microphone so that the front captures more of the low strings while the back captures more of the high strings.
Between the two microphones, the uni-directional microphone will capture lower frequencies at a lower amplitude than the bi-directional microphone. Therefore, blending between the two mics allows for control over the spectral balance of the captured performance.
The two signals created from the bi-directional microphone can be used to have more amplitude of the low strings on one side of the stereo field and more amplitude of the high strings on the opposite side.
Depending on the desired tonal balance, the position of the mics could be swapped so the bi-directional mic is near the 12th fret and the uni-directional near the sound hole.
4) Ambient Spaced Pair
One reason to choose a miking technique for the acoustic guitar is to have a spectral balance of tone across the stereo field. Another reason to use a stereo miking technique is to use the stereo field to add spatial depth to the instrument. This can be accomplished by using a balance of close and distant mics.
One version of this would be to use a single close mic near the 12th fret of the guitar and a spaced pair of ambient room mics.
The close mic can be panned to the center of the stereo field. Then the spaced pair of microphones can be panned left and right.
Mixing more of the close mic will push the acoustic guitar up-front in the mix.
Mixing more of the spaced pair will add depth and push the acoustic guitar back in the mix.
This technique can work well if you have a studio with a good room sound.
In many situations, other instruments are given preference to the best room in the studio while the acoustic guitar is recorded in an isolation booth. Whenever possible, spend the extra time to overdub the acoustic guitar in the best room.
5) Player's Perspective
The motivation for miking techniques used with drums and piano comes from the common way that these instruments are perceived.
A similar concept can be applied to the acoustic guitar.
In this technique, microphones can be placed in proximity to the physical location where the performer will be hearing the instrument.
One microphone can be placed near the left ear of the performer and one microphone can be placed near the right ear of the performer.
In this case, the performer's head acts as a baffle or gobo between the microphones to increase the difference in the captured signal. The captured signals by the microphones should provide a natural stereo image because they will be similar to the signals captured by the performer's ears.
Conclusion
In summary, recording an acoustic guitar can be a very creative process for an audio engineer.
There are many different options for capturing the sound of the instrument.
When it comes to stereo miking techniques, don't hesitate to experiment with different possibilities to achieve a tonal and spatial balance across the stereo field.
Eric Tarr
Eric Tarr is a musician, audio engineer, and producer based in Columbus, Ohio. Currently a Professor of Audio Engineering Technology at Belmont University in Nashville, TN.
Wednesday, 2 November 2016
How To Mix And Record Vocals
Learn how to record and mix vocals in your own studio. Achieving high quality vocal recordings can be confusing at the best of times. Having clear and prominent vocals with the right processing can really enhance your mix and add a serious boost to your production skills..
The tips and techniques shown in this article will help you achieve the results that your music deserves.
Choosing The Right Microphone:
First of all, you need to decide if you're going to use a Small or Large diaphragm microphone. Your choice of microphone for a singers particular vocal tone can have a dramatic effect on the final mix.
Typically, in today's industry, large diaphragm microphones are the standard. They offer a certain warmth and smoothness but can also lend your singer an airy/sizzly tone. Cardioid-
Pattern Capacitor Microphones are the most common for any type of Pop or Urban recordings. However some singers prefer to use dynamic microphones such as some ‘Shure' models because it brings out a certain tone in their voice.
Valve/Tube condenser mic's have also been popular over the years with their added warmth as the valve in the mic gets driven and adds a mild harmonic distortion that is pleasing to the ear.
A favourite of mine is the 90's model of the AKG Solidtube which was a particularly ‘colourful' mic. I used this mic to record the acoustic guitars for our Acoustic Guitar - Steel String Essentials V1 loop pack. It's also a great vocal mic and works surprisingly well as a room ambience mic for drumsAlthough the make and model is important, the tonal characteristics and overall sound is key! This is much more important to the singer than a lot of producers and engineers can appreciate.
Most singers don't care what microphone patterns, make and model is used, just as long as you can bring out a good sound in their vocals. There is nothing more frustrating to a singer than knowing they nailed a perfect take, only to find out the recording doesn't do it justice.
Polar Patterns:
This also ties in with ‘Choosing The Correct Microphone' section above. It's important to take the polar patterns of certain microphones in to account when purchasing your next microphone.
Cardioid-Pattern Microphones are the industry favorite because they generally exclude most off axis sounds, such as room reflections, spill from other sources and the home studio nightmare of the computer fan / cooler!
We would recommend not using an omni-directional pattern microphone unless you have a vocal booth. Omni-directional microphones are equally sensitive all round and will pick up a lot of unwanted sound. If you do have a vocal booth you may find that this type of polar pattern can pick up a more desired vocal sound, or natural ambience.
Try testing out different microphones with different polar patterns and compare the recordings and see what you prefer. As long as you have a good ear for music, it's all about personal taste.
Ribbon microphones are also worth mentioning. As of late, these microphones are showing up in more and more studios. They all have figure-of-eight polar patterns and deliver a very unique and bright sound. Figure of eight polar pattern microphones are equally sensitive to the front as they are the back. In a home studio, putting a sound absorbing panel behind the microphone can stop any unwanted sound to leak in to the vocal recording.
Buyers Tip:
Last year I was in the market for a new vocal mic for some new recordings for Platinumloops, so I hired about 8 different condenser mic's of varying qualities and price ranges. By setting them all up on separate mic stands behind a pro quality pop shield I was able to record lots of vocal takes on multiple mics.
I also rotated the mic positions so that each mic got a fair shot at recording the sweet spot. By doing this I was able to make accurate comparisons of recordings from each mic which yielded surprising results. Some of the most expensive mics didn't sound as good as the less expensive mics. It was also good to try adding compression, eq and de-essing to each track individually to see how much that affected the tone of the mic.
I found that some mic's required less processing than others in order to create a transparent, even tone.
In the end, the mic I eventually purchased was the SE Electronics Z3300A and to this day is my favourite all round vocal mic. This is the mic I used to record our popular Lush V1 - 12 String Guitar & Voice loop pack.
Mic Pre-amps
As I covered in my article on How to Record Drums , do you really need a Microphone Pre-amp?
The answer is No you don't NEED them, but it would be nice to use the best Mic-pre's you can get your hands on. My microphone pre-amp of choice is the Focusrite Liquid Channel which I use on pretty much everything I record. I like to tweak the harmonics” knob on the Liquid channel just a little bit on the snare but this is only a very subtle enhancement.
Acoustic Problems And Treatments:
Unless your studio has been professionally designed by professional acoustic designers there will be reflections from lots of different sources in your recording room.
Why is this such a big problem?
Well, if you get the sound you're after you will still have the reverb and reflections from the room layered over the vocal take. So when adding a nice reverb sound in the mix, you'll essentially be adding reverb to an already reverberated signal. This is a huge problem in the typical home studio.
Home studios have lots of unwanted room reflections and prevent you from achieving a professional sound. Overlooking acoustic treatment is a big mistake. You could spend thousands on a great selection of microphones and equipment, but without a correctly treated recording booth / room you'll have problems at the mixing stage.
If you can't afford to do much acoustic treatment, many home studios simply hang a duvet, blanket or curtains behind the microphone and around the singer. This can go a long way and you'll be able to notice the difference immediately. This will at least stop the ‘boxy' type of sound you get when not treating the environment.
A rug/carpet rather than wood floor will also help tremendously.
If you can afford acoustic treatment there are various products available that won't break the bank and will seriously reduce your room reflections. We recently treated one of our new mixing rooms with a Room Kit and Cloud Kit from Primacoustic and it seriously improved the sound of the room for less than $1000.
If you're a lottery winner there are many professional acoustic engineers available to take your money and get your rooms sounding perfect. A quick internet search will yield many results.
Shock-Mount & Pop Shield:
While a Shock-Mount is not the most important aspect in achieving a great vocal sound, it will stop those annoying low end vibrations coming up from the floor. Most decent microphones will come with a Shock-Mount.
Before you can start recording, purchasing a decent Shock-Mount and Pop Shield is vital. Fitting the pop shield a few inches away from the microphone will stop the popping and booming problems you'll get in the vocal performance. Certain words and sounds, such as ‘P' will give that effect, using a pop shield eliminates the blasts of air (called ‘Plosives') hitting the microphones diaphragm.
Recording Vocals
Now you're finally ready to start recording the vocals. We would suggest not using much compression (if any) at the recording stages, and definitely no EQ. Recording the sound with no processing allows more flexibility and control at the mix stage.
Experienced engineers may use certain types of processing at the recordings stage, but this is risky. What might sound great when isolated might sound terrible in the mix and frequency spectrum. For this reason I would suggest recording with no effects or processing. A tiny bit of compression can work well, but make sure not to overdo it. You can always add more at the mixing stage!
The Headphone Mix
When recording vocals it's important to help the singer achieve the best performance. For starters, setting up a good headphone mix can make things much easier for yourself and the singer.
The headphone mix must be well balanced, giving the singer a small amount of reverb or delay. It's also a good idea to do a few test recordings and find out what headphone mix the singer likes.
They may want to be smothered in reverb if that helps make them confident. As we mentioned earlier you don't want any processing on the vocals during recording, so even though you're giving the singer reverb, make sure it's not on the recording.
Simply add the effects and processing on the output of your channel as you send it to the microphone amp for the singer. You'll want the flexibility to add different reverbs and see what sounds good later on. You always want as much freedom as possible at the mixing stage.
Be Friendly
Your attitude as a producer / engineer can also be the deciding factor in the singer delivering a good vocal performance.
Try to be encouraging rather than critical about their performance. It's usually a good idea to get the singer to sit in with you after recording a few vocal takes and let them listen to what they've recorded. They are usually their own best critics, so if they can assess problems themselves then it makes your job a lot easier.
Usually they'll ask if they can do another take or correct a line in the song. If a singer is constantly not delivering a good performance then don't keep them in the booth until they get it right. Give them a short 10 - 15 minute break.
This can work wonders. Remember, the best tool in having your singer give the best performance is confidence. Make them comfortable and let them adjust without telling them constantly what they're doing wrong.
Spoiling them with green tea and honey can also help to make them more comfortable. A singer needs lots of fluids to keep their mouth and throat moist, so avoid alcohol which will just dehydrate them. Water is the best drink.
Mixing & Processing Vocals:
Once everything is recorded and you've compiled your favorite takes to create the master and cleaned up any unwanted noise and breath effects in the gaps, you can use a variety of processing and mixing effects to touch up the vocals to get the final polished sound.
EQ
When it comes to EQ there's nothing set in stone. Although following the list below will help you start to clean up the sound:
Removing some of the 150-450Hz range will remove some low-mid range boxiness.
Boosting Frequencies around 8 kHz + can add a nice airy tone, and crisp effect to the sound. However, watch out for the ‘S's and ‘T's as any brightening will inevitably boost these.
When using EQ, make sure to boost and cut as little as you can get away with. Drastically changing the sound with EQ will give an unnatural sound to the performance.
Compression
This is my favourite part of processing vocals. A compressor works in 2 ways. Firstly the main purpose of a compressor is to even out the peaks and dips of volume in the recording. By squeezing the volume of the recording a compressor will make the loudest parts of a recording sound closer in volume to the quiet parts. This gives a smooth, even volume and is kind on your ears.
The second and more important aspect of compression is the musical energy that it gives to a recording. When used correctly, compression adds an immediate pressure and energy to very dynamic recordings that can really bring a vocal take to life.
Listen to a radio DJ and you'll be able to hear the compression pumping away to keep the volume of the voice on an even level. Radio compression is excessive so as to protect peoples hi-fi speakers so I'm not suggesting you use such drastic settings, but experiment and you'll soon discover that compression is the most important tool in processing of vocal recordings.
Aiming for about 6-9dB of gain reduction, using a ratio of between 2:1 and 7:1 on the loudest parts in the track should give you a good starting point. Make sure when setting the attack and release time you get an even sounding reduction. It's important not to get that ‘pumping' effect. You don't want to hear the compressor working, you just want the vocals to sound even.
Reverb
Reverb is really all about personal taste. While some engineers and singers use the smallest amount possible, others will use as much as they can get away with. A plate emulation is usually the common setting used when mixing urban vocals. Plate emulations are good and often serve to settle the vocal into the mix. Try these settings on your vocal sound.
Plate Reverb
Double Tracking
To create that thick wall of sound vocal effect that just sounds huge, you're going to want to double or triple track your vocals. By this we mean record an extra take onto a new audio track and play it alongside the original.
This often smooth's out any pitch imperfections and adds a ‘chorusing' type of effect to the voice. The differences in the two different takes combine to make a lush, dense sound that you'll already be familiar with.
If you decide to double track the vocals. We would recommend doing it for real. Trying to fake a double tracking effect will usually give poor results and make your hard earned vocal recording sound amateur. Although if you must fake the double tracking then follow these tips.
Double Tracking your vocals using pitch variations and not aligning the audio files up perfectly can give great results.
Copying your vocal take to another track, (you can even do this more than once, known as ‘vocal stacking') and using a plug in such as auto tune, or Melodyne you can introduce slight pitch changes in the copied vocal. Also adding a delay of 50 - 120 ms to the copied vocals can also fake the ‘2nd part' vocals well.
De-essing
De-essers can be used either at the mixing stage or recordings stage. If your singer has a particularly sibilant voice you are going to have problems. My advice is to get the singer to back away from the mic so that there is a 10 inch space between the singer and the pop shield. Also ensure that the singer is off-axis (not pointing directly) from the mic diaphragm.
The downside to this is that the recording will loose some of its warmer bottom end and the proximity effect will be gone. The upside is that you'll be able to record a clean usable vocal with only mild de-essing required at mix stage.
So, what is a De-esser?
A De-esser is a tool that engineers can use to take out the very pronounced and harsh ‘S' and ‘T' sounds that some singers can produce. If the problem is really affecting the recording then you will have to use electronic ways of reducing just the sibilant peaks.
Think of a De-Esser as a compressor that only works on the ‘S' and ‘T' sounds. Anything in the 3-6 khz range to be specific. With a de-esser, make sure to use light settings when possible, otherwise you may find your singer has a slight lisp to their recording. If your going to use a De-esser, we recommend spending money on one that really pinpoints the correct frequency range so the rest of the recording is left unchanged!
There are many hardware and software signal processors and mastering tools that have De-esser presets but in my experience you'll need to do some tweaking to hone in on the problem frequencies that need to be compressed. Record the vocal correctly with the right room treatment and you'll only need very subtle de-essing, if any.
Final Thoughts
Make sure you plan the recording process, take your time with the singer and mixing stage and have fun. Experiment with different techniques and find what works best for you and the singer you're working with. By reading this article you've taken your first step to achieving the industry professional vocal sound you've been looking for. Good luck!
The tips and techniques shown in this article will help you achieve the results that your music deserves.
Choosing The Right Microphone:
First of all, you need to decide if you're going to use a Small or Large diaphragm microphone. Your choice of microphone for a singers particular vocal tone can have a dramatic effect on the final mix.
Typically, in today's industry, large diaphragm microphones are the standard. They offer a certain warmth and smoothness but can also lend your singer an airy/sizzly tone. Cardioid-
Pattern Capacitor Microphones are the most common for any type of Pop or Urban recordings. However some singers prefer to use dynamic microphones such as some ‘Shure' models because it brings out a certain tone in their voice.
Valve/Tube condenser mic's have also been popular over the years with their added warmth as the valve in the mic gets driven and adds a mild harmonic distortion that is pleasing to the ear.
A favourite of mine is the 90's model of the AKG Solidtube which was a particularly ‘colourful' mic. I used this mic to record the acoustic guitars for our Acoustic Guitar - Steel String Essentials V1 loop pack. It's also a great vocal mic and works surprisingly well as a room ambience mic for drumsAlthough the make and model is important, the tonal characteristics and overall sound is key! This is much more important to the singer than a lot of producers and engineers can appreciate.
Most singers don't care what microphone patterns, make and model is used, just as long as you can bring out a good sound in their vocals. There is nothing more frustrating to a singer than knowing they nailed a perfect take, only to find out the recording doesn't do it justice.
Polar Patterns:
This also ties in with ‘Choosing The Correct Microphone' section above. It's important to take the polar patterns of certain microphones in to account when purchasing your next microphone.
Cardioid-Pattern Microphones are the industry favorite because they generally exclude most off axis sounds, such as room reflections, spill from other sources and the home studio nightmare of the computer fan / cooler!
We would recommend not using an omni-directional pattern microphone unless you have a vocal booth. Omni-directional microphones are equally sensitive all round and will pick up a lot of unwanted sound. If you do have a vocal booth you may find that this type of polar pattern can pick up a more desired vocal sound, or natural ambience.
Try testing out different microphones with different polar patterns and compare the recordings and see what you prefer. As long as you have a good ear for music, it's all about personal taste.
Ribbon microphones are also worth mentioning. As of late, these microphones are showing up in more and more studios. They all have figure-of-eight polar patterns and deliver a very unique and bright sound. Figure of eight polar pattern microphones are equally sensitive to the front as they are the back. In a home studio, putting a sound absorbing panel behind the microphone can stop any unwanted sound to leak in to the vocal recording.
Buyers Tip:
Last year I was in the market for a new vocal mic for some new recordings for Platinumloops, so I hired about 8 different condenser mic's of varying qualities and price ranges. By setting them all up on separate mic stands behind a pro quality pop shield I was able to record lots of vocal takes on multiple mics.
I also rotated the mic positions so that each mic got a fair shot at recording the sweet spot. By doing this I was able to make accurate comparisons of recordings from each mic which yielded surprising results. Some of the most expensive mics didn't sound as good as the less expensive mics. It was also good to try adding compression, eq and de-essing to each track individually to see how much that affected the tone of the mic.
I found that some mic's required less processing than others in order to create a transparent, even tone.
In the end, the mic I eventually purchased was the SE Electronics Z3300A and to this day is my favourite all round vocal mic. This is the mic I used to record our popular Lush V1 - 12 String Guitar & Voice loop pack.
Mic Pre-amps
As I covered in my article on How to Record Drums , do you really need a Microphone Pre-amp?
The answer is No you don't NEED them, but it would be nice to use the best Mic-pre's you can get your hands on. My microphone pre-amp of choice is the Focusrite Liquid Channel which I use on pretty much everything I record. I like to tweak the harmonics” knob on the Liquid channel just a little bit on the snare but this is only a very subtle enhancement.
Acoustic Problems And Treatments:
Unless your studio has been professionally designed by professional acoustic designers there will be reflections from lots of different sources in your recording room.
Why is this such a big problem?
Well, if you get the sound you're after you will still have the reverb and reflections from the room layered over the vocal take. So when adding a nice reverb sound in the mix, you'll essentially be adding reverb to an already reverberated signal. This is a huge problem in the typical home studio.
Home studios have lots of unwanted room reflections and prevent you from achieving a professional sound. Overlooking acoustic treatment is a big mistake. You could spend thousands on a great selection of microphones and equipment, but without a correctly treated recording booth / room you'll have problems at the mixing stage.
If you can't afford to do much acoustic treatment, many home studios simply hang a duvet, blanket or curtains behind the microphone and around the singer. This can go a long way and you'll be able to notice the difference immediately. This will at least stop the ‘boxy' type of sound you get when not treating the environment.
A rug/carpet rather than wood floor will also help tremendously.
If you can afford acoustic treatment there are various products available that won't break the bank and will seriously reduce your room reflections. We recently treated one of our new mixing rooms with a Room Kit and Cloud Kit from Primacoustic and it seriously improved the sound of the room for less than $1000.
If you're a lottery winner there are many professional acoustic engineers available to take your money and get your rooms sounding perfect. A quick internet search will yield many results.
Shock-Mount & Pop Shield:
While a Shock-Mount is not the most important aspect in achieving a great vocal sound, it will stop those annoying low end vibrations coming up from the floor. Most decent microphones will come with a Shock-Mount.
Before you can start recording, purchasing a decent Shock-Mount and Pop Shield is vital. Fitting the pop shield a few inches away from the microphone will stop the popping and booming problems you'll get in the vocal performance. Certain words and sounds, such as ‘P' will give that effect, using a pop shield eliminates the blasts of air (called ‘Plosives') hitting the microphones diaphragm.
Recording Vocals
Now you're finally ready to start recording the vocals. We would suggest not using much compression (if any) at the recording stages, and definitely no EQ. Recording the sound with no processing allows more flexibility and control at the mix stage.
Experienced engineers may use certain types of processing at the recordings stage, but this is risky. What might sound great when isolated might sound terrible in the mix and frequency spectrum. For this reason I would suggest recording with no effects or processing. A tiny bit of compression can work well, but make sure not to overdo it. You can always add more at the mixing stage!
The Headphone Mix
When recording vocals it's important to help the singer achieve the best performance. For starters, setting up a good headphone mix can make things much easier for yourself and the singer.
The headphone mix must be well balanced, giving the singer a small amount of reverb or delay. It's also a good idea to do a few test recordings and find out what headphone mix the singer likes.
They may want to be smothered in reverb if that helps make them confident. As we mentioned earlier you don't want any processing on the vocals during recording, so even though you're giving the singer reverb, make sure it's not on the recording.
Simply add the effects and processing on the output of your channel as you send it to the microphone amp for the singer. You'll want the flexibility to add different reverbs and see what sounds good later on. You always want as much freedom as possible at the mixing stage.
Be Friendly
Your attitude as a producer / engineer can also be the deciding factor in the singer delivering a good vocal performance.
Try to be encouraging rather than critical about their performance. It's usually a good idea to get the singer to sit in with you after recording a few vocal takes and let them listen to what they've recorded. They are usually their own best critics, so if they can assess problems themselves then it makes your job a lot easier.
Usually they'll ask if they can do another take or correct a line in the song. If a singer is constantly not delivering a good performance then don't keep them in the booth until they get it right. Give them a short 10 - 15 minute break.
This can work wonders. Remember, the best tool in having your singer give the best performance is confidence. Make them comfortable and let them adjust without telling them constantly what they're doing wrong.
Spoiling them with green tea and honey can also help to make them more comfortable. A singer needs lots of fluids to keep their mouth and throat moist, so avoid alcohol which will just dehydrate them. Water is the best drink.
Mixing & Processing Vocals:
Once everything is recorded and you've compiled your favorite takes to create the master and cleaned up any unwanted noise and breath effects in the gaps, you can use a variety of processing and mixing effects to touch up the vocals to get the final polished sound.
EQ
When it comes to EQ there's nothing set in stone. Although following the list below will help you start to clean up the sound:
Removing some of the 150-450Hz range will remove some low-mid range boxiness.
Boosting Frequencies around 8 kHz + can add a nice airy tone, and crisp effect to the sound. However, watch out for the ‘S's and ‘T's as any brightening will inevitably boost these.
When using EQ, make sure to boost and cut as little as you can get away with. Drastically changing the sound with EQ will give an unnatural sound to the performance.
Compression
This is my favourite part of processing vocals. A compressor works in 2 ways. Firstly the main purpose of a compressor is to even out the peaks and dips of volume in the recording. By squeezing the volume of the recording a compressor will make the loudest parts of a recording sound closer in volume to the quiet parts. This gives a smooth, even volume and is kind on your ears.
The second and more important aspect of compression is the musical energy that it gives to a recording. When used correctly, compression adds an immediate pressure and energy to very dynamic recordings that can really bring a vocal take to life.
Listen to a radio DJ and you'll be able to hear the compression pumping away to keep the volume of the voice on an even level. Radio compression is excessive so as to protect peoples hi-fi speakers so I'm not suggesting you use such drastic settings, but experiment and you'll soon discover that compression is the most important tool in processing of vocal recordings.
Aiming for about 6-9dB of gain reduction, using a ratio of between 2:1 and 7:1 on the loudest parts in the track should give you a good starting point. Make sure when setting the attack and release time you get an even sounding reduction. It's important not to get that ‘pumping' effect. You don't want to hear the compressor working, you just want the vocals to sound even.
Reverb
Reverb is really all about personal taste. While some engineers and singers use the smallest amount possible, others will use as much as they can get away with. A plate emulation is usually the common setting used when mixing urban vocals. Plate emulations are good and often serve to settle the vocal into the mix. Try these settings on your vocal sound.
Plate Reverb
Double Tracking
To create that thick wall of sound vocal effect that just sounds huge, you're going to want to double or triple track your vocals. By this we mean record an extra take onto a new audio track and play it alongside the original.
This often smooth's out any pitch imperfections and adds a ‘chorusing' type of effect to the voice. The differences in the two different takes combine to make a lush, dense sound that you'll already be familiar with.
If you decide to double track the vocals. We would recommend doing it for real. Trying to fake a double tracking effect will usually give poor results and make your hard earned vocal recording sound amateur. Although if you must fake the double tracking then follow these tips.
Double Tracking your vocals using pitch variations and not aligning the audio files up perfectly can give great results.
Copying your vocal take to another track, (you can even do this more than once, known as ‘vocal stacking') and using a plug in such as auto tune, or Melodyne you can introduce slight pitch changes in the copied vocal. Also adding a delay of 50 - 120 ms to the copied vocals can also fake the ‘2nd part' vocals well.
De-essing
De-essers can be used either at the mixing stage or recordings stage. If your singer has a particularly sibilant voice you are going to have problems. My advice is to get the singer to back away from the mic so that there is a 10 inch space between the singer and the pop shield. Also ensure that the singer is off-axis (not pointing directly) from the mic diaphragm.
The downside to this is that the recording will loose some of its warmer bottom end and the proximity effect will be gone. The upside is that you'll be able to record a clean usable vocal with only mild de-essing required at mix stage.
So, what is a De-esser?
A De-esser is a tool that engineers can use to take out the very pronounced and harsh ‘S' and ‘T' sounds that some singers can produce. If the problem is really affecting the recording then you will have to use electronic ways of reducing just the sibilant peaks.
Think of a De-Esser as a compressor that only works on the ‘S' and ‘T' sounds. Anything in the 3-6 khz range to be specific. With a de-esser, make sure to use light settings when possible, otherwise you may find your singer has a slight lisp to their recording. If your going to use a De-esser, we recommend spending money on one that really pinpoints the correct frequency range so the rest of the recording is left unchanged!
There are many hardware and software signal processors and mastering tools that have De-esser presets but in my experience you'll need to do some tweaking to hone in on the problem frequencies that need to be compressed. Record the vocal correctly with the right room treatment and you'll only need very subtle de-essing, if any.
Final Thoughts
Make sure you plan the recording process, take your time with the singer and mixing stage and have fun. Experiment with different techniques and find what works best for you and the singer you're working with. By reading this article you've taken your first step to achieving the industry professional vocal sound you've been looking for. Good luck!
Thursday, 27 October 2016
How To Record Vocals
Can you record vocal tracks from home and make them sound like they were recorded in a top commercial recording studio? Are there any advantages for recording vocals at home other then, of course saving a lot of money?
The answer is: YES!
You'll be surprised to know that some of the vocal tracks you hear on the radio were actually recorded at a home studio. When it comes to recording a source of sound with a single microphone like vocals, you can get the same sound quality as a commercial recording studio if you take the proper steps.
Vocal Recording Software
Any software such as Pro-Tools , Cubase , Logic , Digital Performer or even the Garage Band software that comes free with your mac will do. Almost all of these software have the same technique for recording audio (or if we want to call it in it's technical term, converting digital audio to a file on our computer). Some voice recording software that you download for free online might not have the capability of recording CD quality tracks(at least: 44.1KHz 16 bit). IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure that the software you use is for music recording.
Choosing the Right Audio Interface for Vocal Recording
Recording vocals requires a sound card/audio interface with high quality Analog to digital converters and a low latency audio driver. This means that you although you already have a microphone input built in to your computer, connecting a microphone directly to your computer won't give you the sound quality you're after. There are many brands that produce high quality audio interface for recording vocals on a budget. For example: M-Audio Firewire Solo ($249), M-Audio Fast Track ($149), Avid's MBox Mini ($269), and many others. When you buy your Audio interface for vocals, always make sure it has an XLR, BALANCED connection Here comes the fun part: Almost any card that you'll buy will have the same sound quality. I know many readers would probably kill me for that sentence, but guys, it's true! Almost all semi-professional audio interfaces are using the same chip made in China and the only difference in the driver is the amount of input/outputs (which doesn't matter to you cause you're using only 1 channel to record vocals), preamp and design. I tested a $149 audio interface with Pro-Tools' 192 A/D converters (worth $4500) and I could barely hear the difference.
Preamp for Recording Vocals
I'll try to explain what a preamp is in a simple paragraph. When you sing to a microphone you create analog sound that needs to be amplified about 1000 times in order to reach zero DB (which is the level of music played in your headphones). For more info, wiki it. All the audio interfaces I mentioned before, have a preamp built in. If you are on a budget under $1000 for your home studio, you are fine with the built in preamp and don't need to buy an external one. If you do want to buy an external one, like a tube preamp to warm up” your vocals, try reading recommendation on Gearslutz However, if you hire a mixing engineer , warming up your vocals with analog outboard gear can be done in the mixing stage - not necessarily in the vocal stage. Again, it would be very hard for you to tell the difference between your built in preamp in a ~$100 audio interface and a high-end preamp that costs $1,000.
Microphone for Vocal Recording
When it comes to microphones there is a noticeable difference with compering a $200-$300 mic and a ~$1000 mic. The materials of the microphone such as the membrane metal type and thickness are crucial for picking up low frequencies as well as high level vocalists screaming into the mic net.
Here's a short guide to buy your first microphone:
You want a condenser microphone, not a dynamic one.
Don't be afraid of buying a cheap microphone made in China… they sound as good as well known brands but cost 30% less.
Don't count on specifications only. Almost all microphones under $1000 aren't being tested individually and the specs are being calculated in factory conditions on a specific mic”.
Here are a few recommendations for good vocal microphones: Audio-Technica AT2020n ($100), Neumann TLM 102 ($700), AKG C 414 XL II ($1,000) or any early edition of this mic… (I LOVE the AKG 414 and so do the StudioPros' musicians!)
One important note: Don't save on the microphone cable. Make sure your are using a good XLR, Balanced microphone cable, not longer than 15′-25′. There's no point in buying a high quality microphone if you're using a cheap cable.
Vocal Recording Tips - Vocal Booth and Acoustics
This might be THE MOST IMPORTANT section of this entire vocal recording technique guide. The acoustics of the room, the place you choose to position your microphone and the distance of your lips from the mic are crucial for getting a good vocal sound. Here's a short vocal sound engineering that will dramatically improve your vocal recording:
Acoustic Space: Try this: Stand 1″ from the wall and try to sing. You'll hear that your voice echoes off of the wall. This happens in rooms that are not acoustically treated. In order to record high-quality vocals, you should reduce the amount of reflections coming from the walls, ceiling and floor. The key is to use heavy item with rough surfaces around the room to absorb the sound. Put a thick carpet on the floor, use a library shelf with books, a sofa, etc'. For more professional acoustic treatment, I recommend 2″ Studio foam Wedges
Vocal booths are huge booths with acoustic treatments that allow you to get absolute silence when recording your vocals. However, those are very expensive, require a lot of space and are pretty ugly :)… Not my cup of tea.
Avoiding the unwanted reflections are crucial for a good sounding vocal track. This is more important than buying the right gear or software.
You don't want to place the microphone close to a wall because of the wall's reflections, but you also want to stay away from all source of noise like computer fans and windows. It's obvious that you better record your vocal tracks in a room that's doesn't have noise from the outside or inside of the house. Remember: any sound will be amplified 1,000 times and might be noticeable when mixing your vocals.
Most Common Mistakes of Recording Vocals
Use a pop filter : A pop filter will help you avoid booming the microphone with the air pressure cause by saying the letters P, B, and others. If you're not sure what I mean, put your hand close to your month and say: Popcorn”. You'll feel the pop of air coming from your month. You microphone doesn't like those.
Your lips should be approximately 2″-6″ from your microphone. The closer you are to your microphone the more bass you'll have. The further you get away from the mic, the lower your vocal would be comparing to the overall noise and reflections in the room.
This last mistakes is very silly, but I've seen it happen so many times, I can't even count. When you sing - don't touch the microphone, don't hold the mic stand and especially don't tap your foot on the floor. (Some people gets very excited when they sing their song…)
To sum up the how to record vocals guide - Part 1
You can record great sounding vocal tracks with semi-professional gear on an independent musicians budget. No matter how good your gear is, it's more important to know how to get the most out of it. Your mission is to provide high-quality sources of vocals. A good mixing engineer will be able to take it to the next level afterward.
The answer is: YES!
You'll be surprised to know that some of the vocal tracks you hear on the radio were actually recorded at a home studio. When it comes to recording a source of sound with a single microphone like vocals, you can get the same sound quality as a commercial recording studio if you take the proper steps.
Vocal Recording Software
Any software such as Pro-Tools , Cubase , Logic , Digital Performer or even the Garage Band software that comes free with your mac will do. Almost all of these software have the same technique for recording audio (or if we want to call it in it's technical term, converting digital audio to a file on our computer). Some voice recording software that you download for free online might not have the capability of recording CD quality tracks(at least: 44.1KHz 16 bit). IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure that the software you use is for music recording.
Choosing the Right Audio Interface for Vocal Recording
Recording vocals requires a sound card/audio interface with high quality Analog to digital converters and a low latency audio driver. This means that you although you already have a microphone input built in to your computer, connecting a microphone directly to your computer won't give you the sound quality you're after. There are many brands that produce high quality audio interface for recording vocals on a budget. For example: M-Audio Firewire Solo ($249), M-Audio Fast Track ($149), Avid's MBox Mini ($269), and many others. When you buy your Audio interface for vocals, always make sure it has an XLR, BALANCED connection Here comes the fun part: Almost any card that you'll buy will have the same sound quality. I know many readers would probably kill me for that sentence, but guys, it's true! Almost all semi-professional audio interfaces are using the same chip made in China and the only difference in the driver is the amount of input/outputs (which doesn't matter to you cause you're using only 1 channel to record vocals), preamp and design. I tested a $149 audio interface with Pro-Tools' 192 A/D converters (worth $4500) and I could barely hear the difference.
Preamp for Recording Vocals
I'll try to explain what a preamp is in a simple paragraph. When you sing to a microphone you create analog sound that needs to be amplified about 1000 times in order to reach zero DB (which is the level of music played in your headphones). For more info, wiki it. All the audio interfaces I mentioned before, have a preamp built in. If you are on a budget under $1000 for your home studio, you are fine with the built in preamp and don't need to buy an external one. If you do want to buy an external one, like a tube preamp to warm up” your vocals, try reading recommendation on Gearslutz However, if you hire a mixing engineer , warming up your vocals with analog outboard gear can be done in the mixing stage - not necessarily in the vocal stage. Again, it would be very hard for you to tell the difference between your built in preamp in a ~$100 audio interface and a high-end preamp that costs $1,000.
Microphone for Vocal Recording
When it comes to microphones there is a noticeable difference with compering a $200-$300 mic and a ~$1000 mic. The materials of the microphone such as the membrane metal type and thickness are crucial for picking up low frequencies as well as high level vocalists screaming into the mic net.
Here's a short guide to buy your first microphone:
You want a condenser microphone, not a dynamic one.
Don't be afraid of buying a cheap microphone made in China… they sound as good as well known brands but cost 30% less.
Don't count on specifications only. Almost all microphones under $1000 aren't being tested individually and the specs are being calculated in factory conditions on a specific mic”.
Here are a few recommendations for good vocal microphones: Audio-Technica AT2020n ($100), Neumann TLM 102 ($700), AKG C 414 XL II ($1,000) or any early edition of this mic… (I LOVE the AKG 414 and so do the StudioPros' musicians!)
One important note: Don't save on the microphone cable. Make sure your are using a good XLR, Balanced microphone cable, not longer than 15′-25′. There's no point in buying a high quality microphone if you're using a cheap cable.
Vocal Recording Tips - Vocal Booth and Acoustics
This might be THE MOST IMPORTANT section of this entire vocal recording technique guide. The acoustics of the room, the place you choose to position your microphone and the distance of your lips from the mic are crucial for getting a good vocal sound. Here's a short vocal sound engineering that will dramatically improve your vocal recording:
Acoustic Space: Try this: Stand 1″ from the wall and try to sing. You'll hear that your voice echoes off of the wall. This happens in rooms that are not acoustically treated. In order to record high-quality vocals, you should reduce the amount of reflections coming from the walls, ceiling and floor. The key is to use heavy item with rough surfaces around the room to absorb the sound. Put a thick carpet on the floor, use a library shelf with books, a sofa, etc'. For more professional acoustic treatment, I recommend 2″ Studio foam Wedges
Vocal booths are huge booths with acoustic treatments that allow you to get absolute silence when recording your vocals. However, those are very expensive, require a lot of space and are pretty ugly :)… Not my cup of tea.
Avoiding the unwanted reflections are crucial for a good sounding vocal track. This is more important than buying the right gear or software.
You don't want to place the microphone close to a wall because of the wall's reflections, but you also want to stay away from all source of noise like computer fans and windows. It's obvious that you better record your vocal tracks in a room that's doesn't have noise from the outside or inside of the house. Remember: any sound will be amplified 1,000 times and might be noticeable when mixing your vocals.
Most Common Mistakes of Recording Vocals
Use a pop filter : A pop filter will help you avoid booming the microphone with the air pressure cause by saying the letters P, B, and others. If you're not sure what I mean, put your hand close to your month and say: Popcorn”. You'll feel the pop of air coming from your month. You microphone doesn't like those.
Your lips should be approximately 2″-6″ from your microphone. The closer you are to your microphone the more bass you'll have. The further you get away from the mic, the lower your vocal would be comparing to the overall noise and reflections in the room.
This last mistakes is very silly, but I've seen it happen so many times, I can't even count. When you sing - don't touch the microphone, don't hold the mic stand and especially don't tap your foot on the floor. (Some people gets very excited when they sing their song…)
To sum up the how to record vocals guide - Part 1
You can record great sounding vocal tracks with semi-professional gear on an independent musicians budget. No matter how good your gear is, it's more important to know how to get the most out of it. Your mission is to provide high-quality sources of vocals. A good mixing engineer will be able to take it to the next level afterward.
Sunday, 23 October 2016
How To Record Vocals In A Bedroom
Recording vocals can be one of the more challenging tracking phase processes you may run into. If it wasn't enough of a tough cookie in the studio, you can be sure it's a daunting task in a bedroom (or a home office or any other room you've set aside for recording fun that wasn't purpose-built for it).
The sad truth is that you can't get pro quality vocals happening at home. But you can improve the sound by a mile if you're armed with a few tricks and tips, and that's what I intend to give you.
The Room
The number one factor in vocal recording is the room. You might've thought it was the mic you're using or the pre-amp you're running it through, but the truth is if you've got a U87 and an Avalon but the room you're recording in is crap, you won't be much farther ahead than a guy using a Behringer mic through an Mbox.
You could buy one of those (often rather expensive) reflection shields that attach to the stand and sit behind the microphone, and this will do you some good, particularly if your mic is omnidirectional. However, most common vocal microphones for both home and studio users are cardioid, so the shield will still help to an extent but the majority of problem reflections will come from the front — that is, the surfaces behind the vocalist's head.
This article isn't about treating your room, which is a great idea if you own your home and you can learn more about doing so on a budget here We're talking about cheap, fast and temporary solutions for the moment. The best thing you can do in this case is to grab a blanket and tape it to a wall or hang it over a reasonably tall and wide bookshelf with some books pinning it down on top.
You want to get as much of the surface on the wall behind the singer covered as you can. Don't neglect the area behind and above the head in particular — if your singer is taller than your bookshelf (or even around the same height), forget about hanging the blanket and tape it to the wall. The thickest blanket you can find is best.
Here's an example that compares a bedroom recording without a blanket, and then with a blanket — I've used a clap, the industry standard reflection measurement technology:
As you can hear, the first sound has a very metallic reflection to it, which isn't particularly pleasant. The second clap shows that you can't eliminate reflections in a bedroom this way, but you can control them and give yourself some room to apply a nicer reverb later.
You'll have the best luck in a carpeted room. If you've got floorboards or tiles, get a rug that covers as much of the floor as possible. You should also ensure your curtains or blinds are drawn as window glass is incredibly reflective. Slat blinds are not particularly good at blocking the reflections because of the gap between each strip, so try to hang a curtain even if only for the duration of your recording session. Again, the thicker the better. In some recording rooms a bit of liveliness isn't a bad thing when the reflective surfaces have been purpose-designed, but in a bedroom you're best of deadening as much as you can and adding reverb during the mixing phase of your project.
Dampening the vicinity behind the singer's head can be enough to reduce reflections to decent level for home demo recording, but if you're full of energy and have more blankets than you know what to do with, put one on every wall and maybe even lay one over your desk surface. The last suggestion involves a lot of work — you need to move your gear, put the blanket down, put the gear back, and then repeat the process when you're done, but a reflective desk can cause a lot of problems.
Positioning
Positioning the microphone can be tricky in a home studio situation. You don't want to be too close to walls or other reflective surfaces such as desks (especially desks, as frequencies, in particular bass, will build up underneath the desktop). On the other hand, you don't want to be in the middle of the room — the frequencies that build up due to non-purpose specific room design are most prominent here, and are known as standing waves.
In a small room, as most home recording environments are, it's tough to get away from walls and from the center of the room. My recommendation is that you put yourself closer to a wall that is dampened with a blanket and face the other side of the room. Get a few feet away from the wall if you can do so without putting the microphone in the middle of the room, and make sure the wall you've chosen is furthest away from your desk or windows. You may want to rearrange the room so your desk is at the window! It might increase the reflectivity of that area of the room, but if you can get far enough away from it, this is better than having nowhere to go because your desk is at one end and the window's at the other.
If you can get a few feet in front of the wall you've chosen to dampen, make sure you can dampen as much of that wall as possible. Using a few blankets is a bit of a pain, but worth it in the end.
Your singer should stand about a foot away from the microphone as a general guide. Softer singers might be better off standing at half that distance, while a loud metal screamer might need as much as two feet of distance. Good microphone technique plays a part in the process, which unfortunately requires the singer has some experience with studio recording. Someone who has sung live for years but has never entered a studio is not going to be much better than a total neophyte, particularly if you're using condensers, as the correct technique differs in both situations. They may have a bit of an advantage if you're recording with dynamics (and I've only ever seen a dynamic mic used for studio vocals a couple of times, and one of those times was because the singer was too loud for a condenser even with a -20dB pad on and low gain!).
It's also advisable to put the singer a couple of degrees off the center of the microphone, where it's less sensitive. Singers like to move their heads, and a centimeter can make too much of a difference at dead-center. Which leads me to…
The Proximity Effect
Almost all dynamic microphones and the vast majority of condensers used in a home studio have a proximity effect, which is to say that the closer the sound source is to the microphone, the more the bass frequencies will be exaggerated. 90% of the time, this is undesirable in vocal recordings.
There are a few ways to combat this — your best bet is to use a singer with good microphone technique and awareness of the various problems that can crop up when they move their little heads too close. When you're dealing with a less experienced singer I've found an effective quick fix is to move the pop filter a few inches away from the mic so they physically cannot get too close to the microphone (you are using a pop filter, right? If not, get one right away!). Be careful, as this may limit their ability to compensate for a sudden drop in volume by moving in a bit closer.
Gain
Most people have a tendency to record vocals too loud, which causes clipping and definitely cannot be fixed in the mix. Unfortunately, if you've got a home studio with typical home studio gear, you don't have the luxury of recording too soft, either. With a studio quality set-up, you can record quietly without danger (usually) of running into noise floor problems.
At home, the equipment and cables are almost always too noisy and you need to record with enough volume to escape that ugly sound.
Every time you set up a vocal recording session, you're going to need to spend time getting the levels right so that the quietest point in the song can be heard loudly enough without introducing clipping when the singer gets a bit more passionate in the chorus. To make matters worse, you need to remember that a singer — be it yourself or someone you're recording — will get louder as they get further into the session and begin to overcome nerves, particularly those singers who are not experienced in the recording studio. So even if you spend twenty minutes getting your levels right at first, there's a good chance you'll need to compensate for it by the time you're doing the real-deal tracking.
Make the Singer Sound Great
At least, to them! Almost all singers are suddenly and magically able to sing better if they hear their voice after is has been processed a bit. Different singers have different needs, but a bit of compression and reverb on the monitoring bus are usually the way to go. If your compression and reverb units are hardware units, make sure you can route your headphone bus through them so the hard effects aren't recorded for good, unless you know what you're doing and don't intend to change it later on.
For those of you with a more basic setup, such as an Mbox, headphone mixes aren't an option. You'll need to satisfy yourself with slapping a plug-in or two on the vocal track and using software monitoring, or going without if the latency is too high for that.
Singers — and have no illusions, every singer from yourself to Rob Halford — will try to overcompensate for the flaws they hear in their voice if confronted with the raw sound from the microphone. Some are better at focusing on the performance and doing less compensating than others, but they all do it. Put some artificial control in place with the compressor and a more natural sounding room with a bit of nice reverb.
Ever seen someone who has never worked in a studio enter a treated dead room or anechoic chamber before? I was surprised to find that many people find it disconcerting. A disconcerted singer is not a very good one, so liven up the deadened sound and you'll notice an immediate improvement.
As it happens, they say this is why people sing in the shower more than any other location!
The sad truth is that you can't get pro quality vocals happening at home. But you can improve the sound by a mile if you're armed with a few tricks and tips, and that's what I intend to give you.
The Room
The number one factor in vocal recording is the room. You might've thought it was the mic you're using or the pre-amp you're running it through, but the truth is if you've got a U87 and an Avalon but the room you're recording in is crap, you won't be much farther ahead than a guy using a Behringer mic through an Mbox.
You could buy one of those (often rather expensive) reflection shields that attach to the stand and sit behind the microphone, and this will do you some good, particularly if your mic is omnidirectional. However, most common vocal microphones for both home and studio users are cardioid, so the shield will still help to an extent but the majority of problem reflections will come from the front — that is, the surfaces behind the vocalist's head.
This article isn't about treating your room, which is a great idea if you own your home and you can learn more about doing so on a budget here We're talking about cheap, fast and temporary solutions for the moment. The best thing you can do in this case is to grab a blanket and tape it to a wall or hang it over a reasonably tall and wide bookshelf with some books pinning it down on top.
You want to get as much of the surface on the wall behind the singer covered as you can. Don't neglect the area behind and above the head in particular — if your singer is taller than your bookshelf (or even around the same height), forget about hanging the blanket and tape it to the wall. The thickest blanket you can find is best.
Here's an example that compares a bedroom recording without a blanket, and then with a blanket — I've used a clap, the industry standard reflection measurement technology:
As you can hear, the first sound has a very metallic reflection to it, which isn't particularly pleasant. The second clap shows that you can't eliminate reflections in a bedroom this way, but you can control them and give yourself some room to apply a nicer reverb later.
You'll have the best luck in a carpeted room. If you've got floorboards or tiles, get a rug that covers as much of the floor as possible. You should also ensure your curtains or blinds are drawn as window glass is incredibly reflective. Slat blinds are not particularly good at blocking the reflections because of the gap between each strip, so try to hang a curtain even if only for the duration of your recording session. Again, the thicker the better. In some recording rooms a bit of liveliness isn't a bad thing when the reflective surfaces have been purpose-designed, but in a bedroom you're best of deadening as much as you can and adding reverb during the mixing phase of your project.
Dampening the vicinity behind the singer's head can be enough to reduce reflections to decent level for home demo recording, but if you're full of energy and have more blankets than you know what to do with, put one on every wall and maybe even lay one over your desk surface. The last suggestion involves a lot of work — you need to move your gear, put the blanket down, put the gear back, and then repeat the process when you're done, but a reflective desk can cause a lot of problems.
Positioning
Positioning the microphone can be tricky in a home studio situation. You don't want to be too close to walls or other reflective surfaces such as desks (especially desks, as frequencies, in particular bass, will build up underneath the desktop). On the other hand, you don't want to be in the middle of the room — the frequencies that build up due to non-purpose specific room design are most prominent here, and are known as standing waves.
In a small room, as most home recording environments are, it's tough to get away from walls and from the center of the room. My recommendation is that you put yourself closer to a wall that is dampened with a blanket and face the other side of the room. Get a few feet away from the wall if you can do so without putting the microphone in the middle of the room, and make sure the wall you've chosen is furthest away from your desk or windows. You may want to rearrange the room so your desk is at the window! It might increase the reflectivity of that area of the room, but if you can get far enough away from it, this is better than having nowhere to go because your desk is at one end and the window's at the other.
If you can get a few feet in front of the wall you've chosen to dampen, make sure you can dampen as much of that wall as possible. Using a few blankets is a bit of a pain, but worth it in the end.
Your singer should stand about a foot away from the microphone as a general guide. Softer singers might be better off standing at half that distance, while a loud metal screamer might need as much as two feet of distance. Good microphone technique plays a part in the process, which unfortunately requires the singer has some experience with studio recording. Someone who has sung live for years but has never entered a studio is not going to be much better than a total neophyte, particularly if you're using condensers, as the correct technique differs in both situations. They may have a bit of an advantage if you're recording with dynamics (and I've only ever seen a dynamic mic used for studio vocals a couple of times, and one of those times was because the singer was too loud for a condenser even with a -20dB pad on and low gain!).
It's also advisable to put the singer a couple of degrees off the center of the microphone, where it's less sensitive. Singers like to move their heads, and a centimeter can make too much of a difference at dead-center. Which leads me to…
The Proximity Effect
Almost all dynamic microphones and the vast majority of condensers used in a home studio have a proximity effect, which is to say that the closer the sound source is to the microphone, the more the bass frequencies will be exaggerated. 90% of the time, this is undesirable in vocal recordings.
There are a few ways to combat this — your best bet is to use a singer with good microphone technique and awareness of the various problems that can crop up when they move their little heads too close. When you're dealing with a less experienced singer I've found an effective quick fix is to move the pop filter a few inches away from the mic so they physically cannot get too close to the microphone (you are using a pop filter, right? If not, get one right away!). Be careful, as this may limit their ability to compensate for a sudden drop in volume by moving in a bit closer.
Gain
Most people have a tendency to record vocals too loud, which causes clipping and definitely cannot be fixed in the mix. Unfortunately, if you've got a home studio with typical home studio gear, you don't have the luxury of recording too soft, either. With a studio quality set-up, you can record quietly without danger (usually) of running into noise floor problems.
At home, the equipment and cables are almost always too noisy and you need to record with enough volume to escape that ugly sound.
Every time you set up a vocal recording session, you're going to need to spend time getting the levels right so that the quietest point in the song can be heard loudly enough without introducing clipping when the singer gets a bit more passionate in the chorus. To make matters worse, you need to remember that a singer — be it yourself or someone you're recording — will get louder as they get further into the session and begin to overcome nerves, particularly those singers who are not experienced in the recording studio. So even if you spend twenty minutes getting your levels right at first, there's a good chance you'll need to compensate for it by the time you're doing the real-deal tracking.
Make the Singer Sound Great
At least, to them! Almost all singers are suddenly and magically able to sing better if they hear their voice after is has been processed a bit. Different singers have different needs, but a bit of compression and reverb on the monitoring bus are usually the way to go. If your compression and reverb units are hardware units, make sure you can route your headphone bus through them so the hard effects aren't recorded for good, unless you know what you're doing and don't intend to change it later on.
For those of you with a more basic setup, such as an Mbox, headphone mixes aren't an option. You'll need to satisfy yourself with slapping a plug-in or two on the vocal track and using software monitoring, or going without if the latency is too high for that.
Singers — and have no illusions, every singer from yourself to Rob Halford — will try to overcompensate for the flaws they hear in their voice if confronted with the raw sound from the microphone. Some are better at focusing on the performance and doing less compensating than others, but they all do it. Put some artificial control in place with the compressor and a more natural sounding room with a bit of nice reverb.
Ever seen someone who has never worked in a studio enter a treated dead room or anechoic chamber before? I was surprised to find that many people find it disconcerting. A disconcerted singer is not a very good one, so liven up the deadened sound and you'll notice an immediate improvement.
As it happens, they say this is why people sing in the shower more than any other location!
Saturday, 15 October 2016
How To Record Drums
Recording a live drummer can be lots of fun when done right. At Platinumloops, we've recorded many different drummers in many different locations, sometimes in challenging circumstances.
There are a few things you can do to prepare for ‘on location' recording in order to get the best results.
Your two main objectives are to get the best performance from the drummer and also to get the best sound from the drum kit and the room.
Before starting a session, arm yourself with these essential resources.
1 - Moon Gel
3 - Gaffa Tape
4 - Some Really robust headphones with thick enclosures and long cable.
5 - A couple of tuning keys
6 - Some high quality lubricating oil - not WD40
7 - A headphone amp with stereo in and out.
8 - Some deodorant spray - things can get sweaty
9 - Lots of drinking water
10 - A thick rug or piece of carpet
11 - Some earplugs for both you and the drummer
The Recording Situation
An ideal situation for recording drums is for the drummer to be in a separate live room to the sound engineer. This allows the engineer to monitor the microphone inputs without being deafened by the shed builder on the other side of the glass, however you might not have that luxury.
Recording while in the same room as the drummer does have its benefits. First of all, the communication between engineer and drummer is far better, you can be sat right next to the drummer and it makes for much faster workflow and can often make the drummer feel more comfortable and less isolated.
In addition to this the engineer can often hear unwanted sounds within the room much better than from a control room which he/she otherwise might not notice until the session is over.
Communicating From the Control Room
The downside to recording within the same room as the drummer is obvious ear fatigue and the fact that you can only really monitor the mic inputs properly on playback while the drummer has stopped playing.
If you have a separate live room to the control room but no window between the two, you can easily setup a couple of web cams via wireless internet or use tablets and phones so that you and the drummer can communicate visually.
You'll here the drummer through the mic's when he talks and he will be able to hear you if you patch a mic in to his headphone amp.
The wonders of modern technology eh!
Setting Up
I strongly advise that you learn how to tune a drum kit yourself. I used to be a drummer (a very bad one) so I learned the basics of this years ago. There are some brilliant video tutorials on Youtube that helped to improve my drum tuning skills. If your drummer is really good, they'll know how best to tune the kit and how much life is left in the drum skins (heads).
If your room has a nice wooden floor, you're going to want to protect it with a thick rug or a piece of carpet. You can also buy those rubber floor protectors that will prevent your floor from getting scratched by the rough underside of the rug or carpet.
The carpet also prevents the entire drum kit from moving forwards every time your drummer hits the kick drum. If he's a metal drummer he's going to be hitting it pretty hard.
With the kit setup and tuned, get your drummer to play for a while before you even think about setting up the mic's. What your listening for here are two things.
1 - Firstly, mechanical noises from the kit - such as squeaky pedals, drum stools, rattling tom mounts. I can pretty much guarantee at least one of these noises will rear it's ugly head.
2 - The second thing your listening for are noises from the room - such as vibrating furniture, fixtures and appliances.
You might also want to experiment with the placement of the kit. Start off in the middle of the room and then move the kit to either end to compare the room sound, this is where the carpet/rug comes in handy as you can carefully just drag the whole thing wherever you want it.
Walk around the room while the drummer plays to find the sweat spot for the room ambience, this is where we'll place a mic to add hugeness” to the sound if that's what you're after. If you have a stair case or hallway at the end of the live room, try listening to that space for the sweat spot.
We'll do some more of this later when we crack the mic's out, for now it's all about where to place the kit for the best room sound.
Blu Tack to the Rescue
If you're wondering what the Blu Tack and gaffa tape are for, you'll have figured that out pretty much as soon as the drummer starts playing. Tom mounts are notoriously rattly and creaky, especially in older drum kits or cheaper drum kits.
Use the blu Tack to stuff into the gaps on the tom mounts to silence the rattling, you'll be surprised how much you'll use. Blu Tack is also really good because it doesn't leave much of a residue on the drum hardware and your drummer will thank you for that.
When we recorded our Ultra Metal Drum Loops V1 , we used a spectacular sounding Premiere PK Cabria Drum Kit with Sabian and Zildjian cymbals and a Pearl double kick pedal.
Unfortunately the tom mounts rattled and squeaked so badly that we ended up using two full packs of Blu Tack to silence the pesky things - and this was a brand new kit.
For our Power Ballad Rock Drum Loops V1 we used a brand new Mapex M-Birch kit that had a far superior tom mount system that needed no such Blu Tack treatment. The birch kit was much louder and the hardware was easier to use with no nasty noises to content with. We liked this kit so much that we kept it as our stock studio kit.
The Snare Drum
The gaffa tape is essential to use as a dampener on the snare. If you're recording a funk drummer or a rock drummer that wants a really tight and ‘pingy' snare with minimal rattle, you're going to need to reduce the snare buzz. Use a 6 inch piece of gaffa tape across the centre of the snare then add more if required.
If you want a very natural, roomy kit sound, you might be able to get away without dampening the top head on the snare drum. We like snare drums to be tuned really high so that they cut through the mix, but this tends to make them more prone to resonating when playing other parts of the kit.
To counteract this problem use one or two chunks of moon gel to dampen the resonating top skin. It'll still sound good but won't ring on every time the drummer stamps on the kick drum pedal.
The Kick Drum
Use some heavy duty lubricating oil or grease on the Kick drum pedal and maybe even on the hi-hat pedal. Even once the squeak has gone you still might get some rattle from the kick pedal so get the drummer to adjust the tension on the pedal so that you get a happy compromise of playability and quietness.
An ideal situation is to have a few other pedals on hand just in case, but if the drummer is using a double beater that's not very likely.
The squeaky drum pedal has been the cause of many delayed sessions, so it helps if your drummer is able to be flexible with the pedal tension. Better still, ask your drummer to make sure it's perfectly quiet before they arrive. Time is money.
The beater on the kick drum pedal is also an often overlooked factor. Your drummer might not like the feel of a wooden or plastic beater but you might prefer the sharp clicky sound that it gives you.
If this is going to effect your drummers performance, you're going to have to give way and let them use the felt beater. Try adjusting the height of the beater for both playability and sound quality. You want to get as much definition and punch from the kick drum as possible without making it difficult for the drummer to play.
Tom Toms
Tuning toms is an art form in itself. We won't get into the details of how to tune toms, you can find hundreds of instructional videos on Youtube for that. Let's focus instead on how to overcome some common problems you might experience when recording toms.
It's more than likely that your toms will need some form of dampening to prevent them from resonating every time the drummer hits the kick. After you've spent the last hour tuning them to perfection, you'll feel like crying when you hear how crap they sound after you've slapped a couple of moon gel patches on the top skin.
Don't despair. They might sound a bit lame with the dampening on but by the time you've mixed the kit, added a bit of compression to the toms and then a bit more to the overall stereo kit, they'll sound fantastic again and you wont have as many ‘resonating problems'.
One other problem with toms is that you'll usually find one tom is much louder than the others, namely the hi-tom. You can overcome this with tuning but that's going to compromise that cool tone. Your only option is to leave it up to the drummer to try and balance them out with his playing - that, and shed loads of compression during the mix stage of course.
Balance out the Volume
Finally, listen for imbalances in the volume of the separate kit parts. Even after what I just said about the toms, don't be tempted to leave certain problems up to the mix because there are some things you just cant fix.
For example, rock drummers tend be really heavy on the hi-hat and no matter what you do during the mixing stage, you're going to find it difficult to get the snare sounding sharp and bright without inadvertently boosting the already over loud hi-hat that's bleeding through onto all the mic's.
This is where having a quieter set of hi-hats can be a godsend. Your aim is to get your transient levels as even as possible before you even record. If one of the toms is louder than the entire kit try re-tuning it, adding some dampening with moon gel or even replacing it. The same goes for your cymbals. If your crash cymbals dominate the entire drum mix, you're going to have serious problems down the line.
You can always ask your drummer not to hit certain parts of the kit quite so hard but that's like asking Lewis Hamilton not to drive fast.
Mic'ing Up
Now that you've got the kit and room sounding splendid, the next stage is to bring in the mic's. Assuming you've only got 8 audio inputs in your audio interface you'll need to prioritize.
If your drummer is playing a 5 piece kit, you're probably best to use 7 mic's on the kit and one mic in the sweat spot of the room if you want some room ambience in the mix.
If you're after a tight, closed in sound and you're not bothered about room ambience, bring that 8th mic back in and place it on the hi-hat or some other part of the kit you feel is important. Here's how I would mic up a 5 piece kit.
Kick Drum - AKG D112
Room Ambience - SE Electronics Z3300A
This setup means that my hi-hat, cymbals and ride will primarily get picked up by the 2 overheads and the room mic. In most cases this is perfectly fine but obviously we'd have more control of the mix if we had more inputs and more mic's. This just illustrates how to get the most of an 8 channel situation.
Some people don't like to use condenser mic's for recording drums due to the way they struggle with extreme transients, but I make sure the Z3300A is a long way from the kit and all I can say is that it sounds lush is a room ambience mic.
There are a few things you can do to prepare for ‘on location' recording in order to get the best results.
Your two main objectives are to get the best performance from the drummer and also to get the best sound from the drum kit and the room.
Before starting a session, arm yourself with these essential resources.
1 - Moon Gel
3 - Gaffa Tape
4 - Some Really robust headphones with thick enclosures and long cable.
5 - A couple of tuning keys
6 - Some high quality lubricating oil - not WD40
7 - A headphone amp with stereo in and out.
8 - Some deodorant spray - things can get sweaty
9 - Lots of drinking water
10 - A thick rug or piece of carpet
11 - Some earplugs for both you and the drummer
The Recording Situation
An ideal situation for recording drums is for the drummer to be in a separate live room to the sound engineer. This allows the engineer to monitor the microphone inputs without being deafened by the shed builder on the other side of the glass, however you might not have that luxury.
Recording while in the same room as the drummer does have its benefits. First of all, the communication between engineer and drummer is far better, you can be sat right next to the drummer and it makes for much faster workflow and can often make the drummer feel more comfortable and less isolated.
In addition to this the engineer can often hear unwanted sounds within the room much better than from a control room which he/she otherwise might not notice until the session is over.
Communicating From the Control Room
The downside to recording within the same room as the drummer is obvious ear fatigue and the fact that you can only really monitor the mic inputs properly on playback while the drummer has stopped playing.
If you have a separate live room to the control room but no window between the two, you can easily setup a couple of web cams via wireless internet or use tablets and phones so that you and the drummer can communicate visually.
You'll here the drummer through the mic's when he talks and he will be able to hear you if you patch a mic in to his headphone amp.
The wonders of modern technology eh!
Setting Up
I strongly advise that you learn how to tune a drum kit yourself. I used to be a drummer (a very bad one) so I learned the basics of this years ago. There are some brilliant video tutorials on Youtube that helped to improve my drum tuning skills. If your drummer is really good, they'll know how best to tune the kit and how much life is left in the drum skins (heads).
If your room has a nice wooden floor, you're going to want to protect it with a thick rug or a piece of carpet. You can also buy those rubber floor protectors that will prevent your floor from getting scratched by the rough underside of the rug or carpet.
The carpet also prevents the entire drum kit from moving forwards every time your drummer hits the kick drum. If he's a metal drummer he's going to be hitting it pretty hard.
With the kit setup and tuned, get your drummer to play for a while before you even think about setting up the mic's. What your listening for here are two things.
1 - Firstly, mechanical noises from the kit - such as squeaky pedals, drum stools, rattling tom mounts. I can pretty much guarantee at least one of these noises will rear it's ugly head.
2 - The second thing your listening for are noises from the room - such as vibrating furniture, fixtures and appliances.
You might also want to experiment with the placement of the kit. Start off in the middle of the room and then move the kit to either end to compare the room sound, this is where the carpet/rug comes in handy as you can carefully just drag the whole thing wherever you want it.
Walk around the room while the drummer plays to find the sweat spot for the room ambience, this is where we'll place a mic to add hugeness” to the sound if that's what you're after. If you have a stair case or hallway at the end of the live room, try listening to that space for the sweat spot.
We'll do some more of this later when we crack the mic's out, for now it's all about where to place the kit for the best room sound.
Blu Tack to the Rescue
If you're wondering what the Blu Tack and gaffa tape are for, you'll have figured that out pretty much as soon as the drummer starts playing. Tom mounts are notoriously rattly and creaky, especially in older drum kits or cheaper drum kits.
Use the blu Tack to stuff into the gaps on the tom mounts to silence the rattling, you'll be surprised how much you'll use. Blu Tack is also really good because it doesn't leave much of a residue on the drum hardware and your drummer will thank you for that.
When we recorded our Ultra Metal Drum Loops V1 , we used a spectacular sounding Premiere PK Cabria Drum Kit with Sabian and Zildjian cymbals and a Pearl double kick pedal.
Unfortunately the tom mounts rattled and squeaked so badly that we ended up using two full packs of Blu Tack to silence the pesky things - and this was a brand new kit.
For our Power Ballad Rock Drum Loops V1 we used a brand new Mapex M-Birch kit that had a far superior tom mount system that needed no such Blu Tack treatment. The birch kit was much louder and the hardware was easier to use with no nasty noises to content with. We liked this kit so much that we kept it as our stock studio kit.
The Snare Drum
The gaffa tape is essential to use as a dampener on the snare. If you're recording a funk drummer or a rock drummer that wants a really tight and ‘pingy' snare with minimal rattle, you're going to need to reduce the snare buzz. Use a 6 inch piece of gaffa tape across the centre of the snare then add more if required.
If you want a very natural, roomy kit sound, you might be able to get away without dampening the top head on the snare drum. We like snare drums to be tuned really high so that they cut through the mix, but this tends to make them more prone to resonating when playing other parts of the kit.
To counteract this problem use one or two chunks of moon gel to dampen the resonating top skin. It'll still sound good but won't ring on every time the drummer stamps on the kick drum pedal.
The Kick Drum
Use some heavy duty lubricating oil or grease on the Kick drum pedal and maybe even on the hi-hat pedal. Even once the squeak has gone you still might get some rattle from the kick pedal so get the drummer to adjust the tension on the pedal so that you get a happy compromise of playability and quietness.
An ideal situation is to have a few other pedals on hand just in case, but if the drummer is using a double beater that's not very likely.
The squeaky drum pedal has been the cause of many delayed sessions, so it helps if your drummer is able to be flexible with the pedal tension. Better still, ask your drummer to make sure it's perfectly quiet before they arrive. Time is money.
The beater on the kick drum pedal is also an often overlooked factor. Your drummer might not like the feel of a wooden or plastic beater but you might prefer the sharp clicky sound that it gives you.
If this is going to effect your drummers performance, you're going to have to give way and let them use the felt beater. Try adjusting the height of the beater for both playability and sound quality. You want to get as much definition and punch from the kick drum as possible without making it difficult for the drummer to play.
Tom Toms
Tuning toms is an art form in itself. We won't get into the details of how to tune toms, you can find hundreds of instructional videos on Youtube for that. Let's focus instead on how to overcome some common problems you might experience when recording toms.
It's more than likely that your toms will need some form of dampening to prevent them from resonating every time the drummer hits the kick. After you've spent the last hour tuning them to perfection, you'll feel like crying when you hear how crap they sound after you've slapped a couple of moon gel patches on the top skin.
Don't despair. They might sound a bit lame with the dampening on but by the time you've mixed the kit, added a bit of compression to the toms and then a bit more to the overall stereo kit, they'll sound fantastic again and you wont have as many ‘resonating problems'.
One other problem with toms is that you'll usually find one tom is much louder than the others, namely the hi-tom. You can overcome this with tuning but that's going to compromise that cool tone. Your only option is to leave it up to the drummer to try and balance them out with his playing - that, and shed loads of compression during the mix stage of course.
Balance out the Volume
Finally, listen for imbalances in the volume of the separate kit parts. Even after what I just said about the toms, don't be tempted to leave certain problems up to the mix because there are some things you just cant fix.
For example, rock drummers tend be really heavy on the hi-hat and no matter what you do during the mixing stage, you're going to find it difficult to get the snare sounding sharp and bright without inadvertently boosting the already over loud hi-hat that's bleeding through onto all the mic's.
This is where having a quieter set of hi-hats can be a godsend. Your aim is to get your transient levels as even as possible before you even record. If one of the toms is louder than the entire kit try re-tuning it, adding some dampening with moon gel or even replacing it. The same goes for your cymbals. If your crash cymbals dominate the entire drum mix, you're going to have serious problems down the line.
You can always ask your drummer not to hit certain parts of the kit quite so hard but that's like asking Lewis Hamilton not to drive fast.
Mic'ing Up
Now that you've got the kit and room sounding splendid, the next stage is to bring in the mic's. Assuming you've only got 8 audio inputs in your audio interface you'll need to prioritize.
If your drummer is playing a 5 piece kit, you're probably best to use 7 mic's on the kit and one mic in the sweat spot of the room if you want some room ambience in the mix.
If you're after a tight, closed in sound and you're not bothered about room ambience, bring that 8th mic back in and place it on the hi-hat or some other part of the kit you feel is important. Here's how I would mic up a 5 piece kit.
Kick Drum - AKG D112
Room Ambience - SE Electronics Z3300A
This setup means that my hi-hat, cymbals and ride will primarily get picked up by the 2 overheads and the room mic. In most cases this is perfectly fine but obviously we'd have more control of the mix if we had more inputs and more mic's. This just illustrates how to get the most of an 8 channel situation.
Some people don't like to use condenser mic's for recording drums due to the way they struggle with extreme transients, but I make sure the Z3300A is a long way from the kit and all I can say is that it sounds lush is a room ambience mic.
Saturday, 1 October 2016
How To Record Classical Guitar
How to record classical guitar part 1: Stereo techniques explained
In this blog post I'll explain several stereo techniques often used to record classical guitar - AB, ORTF, XY and MS (Mid-Side). You'll be able to hear the difference for yourself and vote for whatever sound(s) you prefer!
The microphones used for this experiment were my Oktavas Mk-012 modded by Michael Joly with cardioid and omni capsules.
AB Stereo
The AB Stereo Technique uses two spaced microphones to record audio signals. Recommended spacing between the two microphones is between 40 - 60 cm and the microphones can either be pointed forward or angled slightly outwards. In this experiment I used a combination of all these settings.
AB Stereo, mics pointing forward
AB Stereo, mics pointing slightly outwards
1st Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid capsules, microphone spacing s 40 cm, pointed forward, distance between the guitar and either microphone d 80 cm, height h (distance between the floor and the mics) 115 cm.
2nd Sample - AB Stereo, omni capsules, pointed forward, s 40 cm, d 80 cm, h 115 cm.
3rd Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid, pointed slightly outwards, s 45 cm, d 65 cm, h 107 cm.
4thSample - AB Stereo, omni, pointed slightly outwards, s 45 cm, d 65 cm, h 107 cm.
5th Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid, pointed slightly outwards, s 60 cm, d 65 cm, h 115 cm.
ORTF
ORTF is a stereo technique that uses two microphones spaced 17 cm (spacing between the diaphragms) and angled 110º creating the stereo image.
XY Stereo
XY Stereo Technique uses two cardioid microphones in the same point, angled typically 90º. This is achieved by placing one microphone on top of the other with the diaphragms vertically aligned (see the photo below).
MS Stereo
MS (Mid-Side) is a special technique using one cardioid or omni microphone (Mid) and one bi-directional Figure 8 microphone (Side) in the same point and angled 90º creating a stereo image through the MS-matrix.
This means the signals of both microphones should be rearranged separately with the MS-matrix that can be understood by these simple calculations:
Left channel = M + S
Right channel = M - S
This can be done with an MS decoder or a Direction Mixer plugin (for those using Logic Studio). Alternatively, you can do this manually by leaving the Mid channel in the centre and copying the Side channel, panning one copy hard left and the other hard right, reversing the phase of the latter.
In this blog post I'll explain several stereo techniques often used to record classical guitar - AB, ORTF, XY and MS (Mid-Side). You'll be able to hear the difference for yourself and vote for whatever sound(s) you prefer!
The microphones used for this experiment were my Oktavas Mk-012 modded by Michael Joly with cardioid and omni capsules.
AB Stereo
The AB Stereo Technique uses two spaced microphones to record audio signals. Recommended spacing between the two microphones is between 40 - 60 cm and the microphones can either be pointed forward or angled slightly outwards. In this experiment I used a combination of all these settings.
AB Stereo, mics pointing forward
AB Stereo, mics pointing slightly outwards
1st Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid capsules, microphone spacing s 40 cm, pointed forward, distance between the guitar and either microphone d 80 cm, height h (distance between the floor and the mics) 115 cm.
2nd Sample - AB Stereo, omni capsules, pointed forward, s 40 cm, d 80 cm, h 115 cm.
3rd Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid, pointed slightly outwards, s 45 cm, d 65 cm, h 107 cm.
4thSample - AB Stereo, omni, pointed slightly outwards, s 45 cm, d 65 cm, h 107 cm.
5th Sample - AB Stereo, cardioid, pointed slightly outwards, s 60 cm, d 65 cm, h 115 cm.
ORTF
ORTF is a stereo technique that uses two microphones spaced 17 cm (spacing between the diaphragms) and angled 110º creating the stereo image.
XY Stereo
XY Stereo Technique uses two cardioid microphones in the same point, angled typically 90º. This is achieved by placing one microphone on top of the other with the diaphragms vertically aligned (see the photo below).
MS Stereo
MS (Mid-Side) is a special technique using one cardioid or omni microphone (Mid) and one bi-directional Figure 8 microphone (Side) in the same point and angled 90º creating a stereo image through the MS-matrix.
This means the signals of both microphones should be rearranged separately with the MS-matrix that can be understood by these simple calculations:
Left channel = M + S
Right channel = M - S
This can be done with an MS decoder or a Direction Mixer plugin (for those using Logic Studio). Alternatively, you can do this manually by leaving the Mid channel in the centre and copying the Side channel, panning one copy hard left and the other hard right, reversing the phase of the latter.
Monday, 19 September 2016
How To Record Drums Like An Expert
Drum recording is one of those things that you need to get right. There is much less room for experimentation in drum sounds. What I mean to say is, you can have the most alternative guitar sound or effected vocal sound in the world but if the drums don't sound right nobody is going to care.
Sure, you can experiment with different mixing techniques and try different production tricks later down the line, but the first order of business is to nail that drum sound. If your kick drum sounds like a cardboard box beaten with a marshmallow then no amount of mixing is going to fix it. Get it right at the source or don't do it at all.
Correct placement and microphone selection is important to the sound of your recorded drums, but so is the room you are recording in. Let's get busy with some drum recording tricks.
Room
Clap your hands say yeah! Indie music aside (not a big fan), clap your hands. Do it. Right now. If you're in a typical office or living room then chances are it's not going to last that long. The echo will die down within a second since the size of your room don't allow for a lot of buildup of reverb or reflections.
Now, imagine if you were in a gymnasium and clapped your hands. The perceived bigness” of the echo and reverb of the sound is dictated by the size of the room you are in, therefore clapping your hands inside a big gymnasium will result in more reflections, a larger reverb and a longer decay” time for the sound of your handclaps to die down. For more on reverb and reflections see my other Basix tutorial How the Hell do I Use Reverb Anyway?!? ”
So, if we intend to record drums we need to take the room into account, since those reflections from your handclap are just peanuts compared to the amount of echoes and reflections a whole drum kit will make inside a gymnasium. Your ears heard them, and your microphones will most surely do so too.
If you have a mobile recording rig, which today means a laptop, an interface and some microphones and access to some different rooms you can create a whole different feel to your drum sound depending on which you choose. Many engineers opt for a dead, or a very quiet room to track drums in since that will allow them to add the type of reverb they want later on during the mixing process. While this method is sound and valid, just look at all those great rock records that were made before the advent of digital reverb. Recording studios used to have amazing sounding live rooms to track drums in, and that became an inherent part of the drum sound.
If you want to go the safe route, try to find a nice (preferably acoustically treated) room that doesn't have a whole lot of liveness. But if you are up for experimentation then finding an interesting or great sounding room might yield some impressive results.
Pre-production
Gourmet dishes are not cooked from leftovers. You don't wear dirty clothes to a wedding. And you certainly don't record worn heads and out of tune drums if you want great results.
Make sure to replace each drum head and tune it so that each drum sounds both great in its own right and as a part of the kit. If you, or the drummer don't know how to tune a drum properly (I don't really know how, and most drummers are pretty bad at it) get someone that can.
A great sounding drum kit in a great sounding room and you've won half the battle. Next we have to look at what types of microphones we want to be using.
Microphone Selection
A few considerations when choosing the right microphone for recording drums.
How Many? - How many microphones are you going to be using? Are you trying to mike up the kit with only one microphone? Then a full sounding large condenser should be the best bet. It has a broad frequency response and will most accurately capture the kit, especially compared to a dynamic microphone.
Condenser microphones - Condenser microphones (small or large diaphragm) are usually the default microphones of choice used as overheads. Overhead microphones are placed over the drum kit to capture the overall sound of the drum kit from a close distance. Condenser have the capacity to capture all the nuances of the drum kit, from the low end of the kick drum to the swash of the cymbals.
Dynamic microphones - Dynamic microphones can take more volume, but they lack the frequency response and accuracy of a condenser. They can take the pounding and volume of the kick drum and they have no problem with the incredibly loud whack of the snare. If you decide to close mike every drum, then you would usually opt for a good sounding dynamic at each drum; kick, snare and each of the toms.
Ribbon microphones - Ribbons might be a good choice if you can afford it, especially if you are only using a few microphones. Ribbons have a smoother sound, but they are more delicate than the average condenser, and way more fragile than a sturdy dynamic.
Remember, each microphone sounds different and they will all act as a piece of the drum recording puzzle.
Collection of Instruments
One of the things you have to be aware of is that recording drums can be much more complex than recording a regular” instrument that only has one sound source. Take vocals for example, the most standard way of recording vocals is placing a microphone in front of the singer's sound source, i.e. his mouth.
But when you are recording drums, every single drum is a sound source, and you also need to portray the overall sound of the kit as a whole. That's the reason why modern drum recording puts a microphone on every drum and then some overhead mics to capture the complete kit.
People want to control each drum as a specific sound source and then treat the whole drum kit as one sound source as well. Then, by mixing and matching the overall volume of all the tracks in the mixing phase people have more control over what kinds of sounds they can get from their drums.
Kick Drum
I don't care what anybody says. The kick drum is the most important part of the drum sound. You can argue that the snare sound is all you want, and it certainly is important, but if the kick drum lacks power and definition the overall drum sound is going to suffer. The kick drum is also the trickiest sound to get right since the placement of the microphone plays a pivotal role.
Microphone - Your best bet, if you are just using one microphone to record the drums is a large dynamic microphone, such as the AKG D112, Audix D6 or Shure Beta 52A. They will usually have the frequency response needed to get the thick low end coupled with the snap of the beater.
Placement - The default position to try is just inside the outer head (I hope there is a hole in the outer head) pointing at, or just a little off axis towards the beater. In this position the microphone is far enough away as to capture both the boom and the snap. Microphones placed too close to the inner head (the beater side) can't capture the full resonance of the drum since they are facing away from the drum and are picking up too much click” from the beater.
Placing the microphone outside the shell can give you great results, but there is a possibility of the microphone capturing too much bleed from the other drums and that it will lack definition from the beater. Great if you want a natural bass drum sound, but bad if you want a isolated and click” heavy sound.
Best of both worlds? - By using two microphones you can capture both the beater and the boom by placing the microphones at different positions. Positioning one inside the kit close to the beater head and the other just outside the shell will result in two different sounds that can be mixed together to great results. Boundary, or PZM (Pressure Zone Microphones) work really well on the inside since they react well to transients and can usually just sit on the shell.
By combining a PZM that reacts well to transients (initial attack) at the beater and a big dynamic picking up the low end on the outside you can get the best of both worlds.
Snare Drum
The snare drum is the master of the backbeat, and thus must sound great in order to capture the groove. Whether you are producing a heavy rock song or light jazz, careful consideration must be put into the snare drum sound.
Microphone - A trusty Shure SM57, or any other type of dynamic is a great starting point when capturing snare drum. If you looking for a different, more vintage sound then using a large condenser or a ribbon can give the snare a much different feel. Take into account how loud the drummer will be hitting the drum. If he's going to be whacking that drum for all he's got then a condenser might overload too easily, leaving you with a distorted snare instead of a smooth and full sound.
Placement - Consider angling the microphone 45° into the middle of the drum to get the right amount of attack from the snare. For a rounder sound you can angle the microphone into the edge of the drum. Make sure that the microphone isn't in the drummer's way since whacking the microphone will not result in a better sound. In general, for more harmonics angle the mic towards the edges, but if you want more resonance and/or attack then angling the microphone more towards the middle and center will yield greater results for each respective sound.
Above & Below - If you want to achieve a direct sound from the top but want to accent the rattle the snares you can place another microphone underneath the snare pointing up. If you decide to do this make sure you flip the phase of the under-mic either during the recording or at the mixing stage. Most audio programs have a phase invert switch that allow you to flip the phase of your waveform. I touched upon the why's and how's of this practice a long time ago in A Guide to Effective Drum Mixing Part 1
Hi-hat
If you want to have added control over the hi-hat during the mixing stage, then adding a separate microphone for it wouldn't hurt
Microphone - You usually want a small condenser to record the hi-hat. Due to the fast transient nature of the hi-hat you want to capture all the definition and clarity of the hi-hat, even though you're recording a garage rock track.
Placement - Placing the condenser by the edge give you a much different sound than placing it at the center bell of the hi-hat. Also, try placing it in the middle and angle it to or from the edge until you find the sound you are looking for.
Over or under? - Some people swear by under-miking the hi-hat, others don't see why anybody would do such nonsense. Personally, in live situation I place the microphone underneath the hi-hat, facing up but during recording it's the other way around. Why? I don't know. Probably just force of habit.
Toms
Those drum fills need to sound good. The toms need to sound clean, defined and tuned. There's nothing worse than a tom that rings for seconds after it's hit. Assuming you have made all the necessary arrangements and made sure each drum sounds as good as it can then you only have to worry about the right microphone and placement thereof.
Microphone - Dynamic microphones such as an Audix i5, Shure SM57 or a Sennheiser MD421 are a good bet to capture a full and powerful tom sound. Especially if you are playing any sort of hard music then going for dynamics is the way to go. Experienced engineers sometimes use condensers and even ribbons(!) but as always, you have to careful about not overloading those more delicate microphones. In live sound I used to use AKG C519 clip-on condensers for toms. They work really well through a powerful P.A. and can also work well in the studio. Each sound company has a drum miking package that is usually a good bet if you don't have anything to work with.
Placement - The microphone placement is very similar to that of the snare drum. If you want more attack and stick sound from the toms you should angle them towards the middle. If you want a thicker, boomier sound you should angle them straight down towards the edge of the tom so that the microphone picks up the full resonant sound of the toms.
Underneath as well? - If you have a crazy amount of microphones, an amazing kit in a sweet sounding room then more microphones will add to the sound right? Yes, well and no. If you have the resources to mike both sides of the toms then you probably shouldn't be reading this article. But the same rules apply as if you were recording the snare with two microphones. Beware of phase and make sure both microphones are capturing something different.
Overheads
Overheads are usually placed over the drum kit, both to capture the complete kit but also to accent the sounds of the cymbals. There are a few microphone techniques that you can use to accurately and effectively capture both the cymbals and overall drum kit.
X/Y - The X/Y microphone technique can be used effectively as overheads. You don't have to worry about phase problems when using this stereo technique since they are a coincident technique. Meaning that you place them beside each other at a 90° angle facing down onto the drum kit.
A/B - This is the typical one microphone over each side of the drum kit. It's a good rule of thumb to adhere to the 3:1 rule so that if you place one microphone a foot (30 cm) over the cymbal the other microphone must be placed at a distance of 3 feet (or 90 cm).
Accent the cymbals - Just like engineers that place microphones on the hi-hat, some engineers want to accent specific cymbals. For example, if we're recording a minor blues shuffle we might like to record that crucial ride cymbal, giving you added control over its sound during the mixing stage.
Room/Ambience
We've talked about how to mike up every individual sound source of the drum kit. That is, every drum has been covered as a single sound source. Now we need to step back and look at the drum kit as one instrument. When we use room microphones we want to capture the complete kit as well as the room that is complimenting it. If you are in a dead room there should be more thought put into capturing the kit as one instrument, whereas in a great sounding room, there is more preference to finding a good spot where the room and reflections help heighten the drum sound to a different level.
Microphone - I'd like to say that anything goes here. If you are trying to get a nice sounding complete drum kit” sound then a large condenser will do the trick. However, ribbon microphones can do a very similar job, and often a better one since they sound so good. Even normal dynamic microphones can be used to get an extra dimension to the drum kit by placing it in the room.
Placement - Placing a simple SM57 in front of the kit facing up towards the ceiling can give you some ambience from the room. A condenser that you want to use to capture the complete drum kit without adding too much room ambience should be placed at around waist level facing towards the kit. To get the drums an extra stereo dimension, two condensers can be positioned in the upper corners of the room.
Experiment - Lastly, room microphones and ambient miking is very fun to experiment with. There might be a weird place in the room where the drums just really work. Walk around with headphones and try to find where the best place to position your mics is. A long hallway outside the drum room might have a great alternative sound that can work for you.
Throw up a few room microphones all over, record a few measures and see which ones work best.
Conclusion
We've covered some important aspects of recording one of the most complex instruments that us engineers face. The complicated puzzle of multiple types of microphones, placements and techniques is sure to make the beginner engineer nervous. But if we break it down into small pieces, looking at each drum as part of the puzzle and then combining it into one sound source we can more easily understand what makes drum recording such a difficult, but ultimately enjoyable subject.
Sure, you can experiment with different mixing techniques and try different production tricks later down the line, but the first order of business is to nail that drum sound. If your kick drum sounds like a cardboard box beaten with a marshmallow then no amount of mixing is going to fix it. Get it right at the source or don't do it at all.
Correct placement and microphone selection is important to the sound of your recorded drums, but so is the room you are recording in. Let's get busy with some drum recording tricks.
Room
Clap your hands say yeah! Indie music aside (not a big fan), clap your hands. Do it. Right now. If you're in a typical office or living room then chances are it's not going to last that long. The echo will die down within a second since the size of your room don't allow for a lot of buildup of reverb or reflections.
Now, imagine if you were in a gymnasium and clapped your hands. The perceived bigness” of the echo and reverb of the sound is dictated by the size of the room you are in, therefore clapping your hands inside a big gymnasium will result in more reflections, a larger reverb and a longer decay” time for the sound of your handclaps to die down. For more on reverb and reflections see my other Basix tutorial How the Hell do I Use Reverb Anyway?!? ”
So, if we intend to record drums we need to take the room into account, since those reflections from your handclap are just peanuts compared to the amount of echoes and reflections a whole drum kit will make inside a gymnasium. Your ears heard them, and your microphones will most surely do so too.
If you have a mobile recording rig, which today means a laptop, an interface and some microphones and access to some different rooms you can create a whole different feel to your drum sound depending on which you choose. Many engineers opt for a dead, or a very quiet room to track drums in since that will allow them to add the type of reverb they want later on during the mixing process. While this method is sound and valid, just look at all those great rock records that were made before the advent of digital reverb. Recording studios used to have amazing sounding live rooms to track drums in, and that became an inherent part of the drum sound.
If you want to go the safe route, try to find a nice (preferably acoustically treated) room that doesn't have a whole lot of liveness. But if you are up for experimentation then finding an interesting or great sounding room might yield some impressive results.
Pre-production
Gourmet dishes are not cooked from leftovers. You don't wear dirty clothes to a wedding. And you certainly don't record worn heads and out of tune drums if you want great results.
Make sure to replace each drum head and tune it so that each drum sounds both great in its own right and as a part of the kit. If you, or the drummer don't know how to tune a drum properly (I don't really know how, and most drummers are pretty bad at it) get someone that can.
A great sounding drum kit in a great sounding room and you've won half the battle. Next we have to look at what types of microphones we want to be using.
Microphone Selection
A few considerations when choosing the right microphone for recording drums.
How Many? - How many microphones are you going to be using? Are you trying to mike up the kit with only one microphone? Then a full sounding large condenser should be the best bet. It has a broad frequency response and will most accurately capture the kit, especially compared to a dynamic microphone.
Condenser microphones - Condenser microphones (small or large diaphragm) are usually the default microphones of choice used as overheads. Overhead microphones are placed over the drum kit to capture the overall sound of the drum kit from a close distance. Condenser have the capacity to capture all the nuances of the drum kit, from the low end of the kick drum to the swash of the cymbals.
Dynamic microphones - Dynamic microphones can take more volume, but they lack the frequency response and accuracy of a condenser. They can take the pounding and volume of the kick drum and they have no problem with the incredibly loud whack of the snare. If you decide to close mike every drum, then you would usually opt for a good sounding dynamic at each drum; kick, snare and each of the toms.
Ribbon microphones - Ribbons might be a good choice if you can afford it, especially if you are only using a few microphones. Ribbons have a smoother sound, but they are more delicate than the average condenser, and way more fragile than a sturdy dynamic.
Remember, each microphone sounds different and they will all act as a piece of the drum recording puzzle.
Collection of Instruments
One of the things you have to be aware of is that recording drums can be much more complex than recording a regular” instrument that only has one sound source. Take vocals for example, the most standard way of recording vocals is placing a microphone in front of the singer's sound source, i.e. his mouth.
But when you are recording drums, every single drum is a sound source, and you also need to portray the overall sound of the kit as a whole. That's the reason why modern drum recording puts a microphone on every drum and then some overhead mics to capture the complete kit.
People want to control each drum as a specific sound source and then treat the whole drum kit as one sound source as well. Then, by mixing and matching the overall volume of all the tracks in the mixing phase people have more control over what kinds of sounds they can get from their drums.
Kick Drum
I don't care what anybody says. The kick drum is the most important part of the drum sound. You can argue that the snare sound is all you want, and it certainly is important, but if the kick drum lacks power and definition the overall drum sound is going to suffer. The kick drum is also the trickiest sound to get right since the placement of the microphone plays a pivotal role.
Microphone - Your best bet, if you are just using one microphone to record the drums is a large dynamic microphone, such as the AKG D112, Audix D6 or Shure Beta 52A. They will usually have the frequency response needed to get the thick low end coupled with the snap of the beater.
Placement - The default position to try is just inside the outer head (I hope there is a hole in the outer head) pointing at, or just a little off axis towards the beater. In this position the microphone is far enough away as to capture both the boom and the snap. Microphones placed too close to the inner head (the beater side) can't capture the full resonance of the drum since they are facing away from the drum and are picking up too much click” from the beater.
Placing the microphone outside the shell can give you great results, but there is a possibility of the microphone capturing too much bleed from the other drums and that it will lack definition from the beater. Great if you want a natural bass drum sound, but bad if you want a isolated and click” heavy sound.
Best of both worlds? - By using two microphones you can capture both the beater and the boom by placing the microphones at different positions. Positioning one inside the kit close to the beater head and the other just outside the shell will result in two different sounds that can be mixed together to great results. Boundary, or PZM (Pressure Zone Microphones) work really well on the inside since they react well to transients and can usually just sit on the shell.
By combining a PZM that reacts well to transients (initial attack) at the beater and a big dynamic picking up the low end on the outside you can get the best of both worlds.
Snare Drum
The snare drum is the master of the backbeat, and thus must sound great in order to capture the groove. Whether you are producing a heavy rock song or light jazz, careful consideration must be put into the snare drum sound.
Microphone - A trusty Shure SM57, or any other type of dynamic is a great starting point when capturing snare drum. If you looking for a different, more vintage sound then using a large condenser or a ribbon can give the snare a much different feel. Take into account how loud the drummer will be hitting the drum. If he's going to be whacking that drum for all he's got then a condenser might overload too easily, leaving you with a distorted snare instead of a smooth and full sound.
Placement - Consider angling the microphone 45° into the middle of the drum to get the right amount of attack from the snare. For a rounder sound you can angle the microphone into the edge of the drum. Make sure that the microphone isn't in the drummer's way since whacking the microphone will not result in a better sound. In general, for more harmonics angle the mic towards the edges, but if you want more resonance and/or attack then angling the microphone more towards the middle and center will yield greater results for each respective sound.
Above & Below - If you want to achieve a direct sound from the top but want to accent the rattle the snares you can place another microphone underneath the snare pointing up. If you decide to do this make sure you flip the phase of the under-mic either during the recording or at the mixing stage. Most audio programs have a phase invert switch that allow you to flip the phase of your waveform. I touched upon the why's and how's of this practice a long time ago in A Guide to Effective Drum Mixing Part 1
Hi-hat
If you want to have added control over the hi-hat during the mixing stage, then adding a separate microphone for it wouldn't hurt
Microphone - You usually want a small condenser to record the hi-hat. Due to the fast transient nature of the hi-hat you want to capture all the definition and clarity of the hi-hat, even though you're recording a garage rock track.
Placement - Placing the condenser by the edge give you a much different sound than placing it at the center bell of the hi-hat. Also, try placing it in the middle and angle it to or from the edge until you find the sound you are looking for.
Over or under? - Some people swear by under-miking the hi-hat, others don't see why anybody would do such nonsense. Personally, in live situation I place the microphone underneath the hi-hat, facing up but during recording it's the other way around. Why? I don't know. Probably just force of habit.
Toms
Those drum fills need to sound good. The toms need to sound clean, defined and tuned. There's nothing worse than a tom that rings for seconds after it's hit. Assuming you have made all the necessary arrangements and made sure each drum sounds as good as it can then you only have to worry about the right microphone and placement thereof.
Microphone - Dynamic microphones such as an Audix i5, Shure SM57 or a Sennheiser MD421 are a good bet to capture a full and powerful tom sound. Especially if you are playing any sort of hard music then going for dynamics is the way to go. Experienced engineers sometimes use condensers and even ribbons(!) but as always, you have to careful about not overloading those more delicate microphones. In live sound I used to use AKG C519 clip-on condensers for toms. They work really well through a powerful P.A. and can also work well in the studio. Each sound company has a drum miking package that is usually a good bet if you don't have anything to work with.
Placement - The microphone placement is very similar to that of the snare drum. If you want more attack and stick sound from the toms you should angle them towards the middle. If you want a thicker, boomier sound you should angle them straight down towards the edge of the tom so that the microphone picks up the full resonant sound of the toms.
Underneath as well? - If you have a crazy amount of microphones, an amazing kit in a sweet sounding room then more microphones will add to the sound right? Yes, well and no. If you have the resources to mike both sides of the toms then you probably shouldn't be reading this article. But the same rules apply as if you were recording the snare with two microphones. Beware of phase and make sure both microphones are capturing something different.
Overheads
Overheads are usually placed over the drum kit, both to capture the complete kit but also to accent the sounds of the cymbals. There are a few microphone techniques that you can use to accurately and effectively capture both the cymbals and overall drum kit.
X/Y - The X/Y microphone technique can be used effectively as overheads. You don't have to worry about phase problems when using this stereo technique since they are a coincident technique. Meaning that you place them beside each other at a 90° angle facing down onto the drum kit.
A/B - This is the typical one microphone over each side of the drum kit. It's a good rule of thumb to adhere to the 3:1 rule so that if you place one microphone a foot (30 cm) over the cymbal the other microphone must be placed at a distance of 3 feet (or 90 cm).
Accent the cymbals - Just like engineers that place microphones on the hi-hat, some engineers want to accent specific cymbals. For example, if we're recording a minor blues shuffle we might like to record that crucial ride cymbal, giving you added control over its sound during the mixing stage.
Room/Ambience
We've talked about how to mike up every individual sound source of the drum kit. That is, every drum has been covered as a single sound source. Now we need to step back and look at the drum kit as one instrument. When we use room microphones we want to capture the complete kit as well as the room that is complimenting it. If you are in a dead room there should be more thought put into capturing the kit as one instrument, whereas in a great sounding room, there is more preference to finding a good spot where the room and reflections help heighten the drum sound to a different level.
Microphone - I'd like to say that anything goes here. If you are trying to get a nice sounding complete drum kit” sound then a large condenser will do the trick. However, ribbon microphones can do a very similar job, and often a better one since they sound so good. Even normal dynamic microphones can be used to get an extra dimension to the drum kit by placing it in the room.
Placement - Placing a simple SM57 in front of the kit facing up towards the ceiling can give you some ambience from the room. A condenser that you want to use to capture the complete drum kit without adding too much room ambience should be placed at around waist level facing towards the kit. To get the drums an extra stereo dimension, two condensers can be positioned in the upper corners of the room.
Experiment - Lastly, room microphones and ambient miking is very fun to experiment with. There might be a weird place in the room where the drums just really work. Walk around with headphones and try to find where the best place to position your mics is. A long hallway outside the drum room might have a great alternative sound that can work for you.
Throw up a few room microphones all over, record a few measures and see which ones work best.
Conclusion
We've covered some important aspects of recording one of the most complex instruments that us engineers face. The complicated puzzle of multiple types of microphones, placements and techniques is sure to make the beginner engineer nervous. But if we break it down into small pieces, looking at each drum as part of the puzzle and then combining it into one sound source we can more easily understand what makes drum recording such a difficult, but ultimately enjoyable subject.
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